ALSO BY PHILIPPE SANDS
Books
Torture Team
Lawless World
Principles of International Environmental Law
Justice for Crimes Against Humanity (ed.)
From Nuremberg to The Hague (ed.)
Bowett’s Law of International Institutions
Film
What Our Fathers Did: A Nazi Legacy
Performance
A Song of Good and Evil
Credit fm1.1
“Genocide” in the handwriting of Rafael
Lemkin, ca. 1945, and “Crimes against humanity,”
Hersch Lauterpacht, July 1946.
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright © 2016 by Philippe Sands
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division
of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by
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Limited, Toronto.
www.aaknopf.com
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2016933268
ISBN 978-0-385-35071-6 (hardcover) ISBN 978-0-385-35072-3 (ebook) Cover
photograph by Darren Alff
Cover design by Janet Hansen
Maps by International Mapping, Ellicott City, Maryland eBook ISBN
9780385350723
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a
For Malke and Rosa,
for Rita and Leon,
for Annie,
for Ruth
The little town lies in the middle of a great plain…
It begins with little huts and ends with them.
After a while the huts are replaced by houses.
Streets begin. One runs from north to south, the
other from east to west.
—JOSEPH ROTH, The Wandering Jews, 1927
What haunts are not the dead, but the gaps left
within us by the secrets of others.
—NICOLAS ABRAHAM, “Notes on the Phantom,” 1975
Contents
Cover
Also by Philippe Sands
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Note to the Reader
Principal Characters
Map
Prologue: An Invitation
PART I
Leon
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
PART II
PART III
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
Lauterpacht
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Miss Tilney of Norwich
Chapter 49
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
PART IV
PART V
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
Lemkin
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
The Man in a Bow Tie
Chapter 81
PART VI
PART VII
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
82
83
84
85
86
Frank
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
The Child Who Stands Alone
Chapter 111
Chapter 112
Chapter 113
Chapter 114
PART VIII
PART IX
PART X
Nuremberg
Chapter 115
Chapter 116
Chapter 117
Chapter 118
Chapter 119
Chapter 120
Chapter 121
Chapter 122
Chapter 123
Chapter 124
Chapter 125
Chapter 126
Chapter 127
Chapter 128
Chapter 129
Chapter 130
The Girl Who Chose Not to Remember
Chapter 131
Chapter 132
Chapter 133
Chapter 134
Judgment
Chapter 135
Chapter 136
Chapter 137
Chapter 138
Chapter 139
Chapter 140
Chapter 141
Chapter 142
Chapter 143
Chapter 144
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
Epilogue: To the Woods
Acknowledgments
Sources
Notes
Illustration Credits
Note to the Reader
The city of Lviv occupies an important place in this story.
Through the nineteenth century, it was generally known as
Lemberg, located on the eastern outskirts of the AustroHungarian Empire. Soon after World War I, it became part
of newly independent Poland, called Lwów, until the
outbreak of World War II, when it was occupied by the
Soviets, who knew it as Lvov. In July 1941, the Germans
unexpectedly conquered the city and made it the capital of
Distrikt Galizien in the General Government, known once
more as Lemberg. After the Red Army vanquished the
Nazis in the summer of 1944, it became part of Ukraine
and was called Lviv, the name that is generally used today.
Exceptionally, if you fly to the city from Munich, the airport
screens identify the destination as Lemberg.
Lemberg, Lviv, Lvov, and Lwów are the same place. The
name has changed, as has the composition and nationality
of its inhabitants, but the location and the buildings have
remained. This is even as the city changed hands, no fewer
than eight times in the years between 1914 and 1945. What
to call the city in the pages of this book posed a number of
difficulties, so I have used the name by which it was
referred to by those who controlled it at the time of which I
am writing. (I generally adopt the same approach for other
places: nearby Żółkiew is now Zhovkva, after an
interregnum from 1951 to 1991, when it was called
Nesterov in honor of a Russian World War I hero, the first
pilot to fly a loop.)
I thought of calling it Lemberg throughout, because the
word evokes a gentle sense of history, as well as being the
city of my grandfather’s childhood. Yet such a choice could
be taken as sending a signal, which might cause offense to
others, all the more unfortunate at a time when the
territory of Ukraine is being fought over with Russia. The
same went for the name Lwów, which it was called for two
decades, and also for Lviv, which had been the name of the
city for just a few tumultuous days in November 1918. Italy
never controlled the city, but if it had, it would be called
Leopolis, the City of Lions.
Principal Characters
Hersch Lauterpacht, professor of international law, was
born in August 1897 in the small town of Żółkiew, a few
miles from Lemberg, to which the family moved in 1911.
The son of Aron and Deborah (née Turkenkopf), he was the
second of three children, between his brother, David, and
his sister, Sabina. In 1923, he married Rachel Steinberg in
Vienna, and they had one son, Elihu, who was born in
Cricklewood, London.
Hans Frank, a lawyer and government minister, was
born in Karlsruhe in May 1900. He had two brothers, one
older and one younger. In 1925, he married Brigitte (née
Herbst), and they had two daughters and three sons, the
last of whom was named Niklas. In August 1942, he spent
two days in Lemberg, where he delivered several speeches.
Rafael Lemkin, a prosecutor and lawyer, was born in
Ozerisko near Białystok, in June 1900. The son of Josef and
Bella, he had two brothers (the older, Elias, and the
younger, Samuel). In 1921, he moved to Lwów. He never
married and had no children.
My grandfather Leon Buchholz was born in Lemberg in
May 1904. The son of Pinkas, educated as a distiller of
spirits and later an innkeeper, and Malke (née Flaschner),
he was the youngest of four children, after his older
brother, Emil, and two sisters, Gusta and Laura. He
married Regina “Rita” Landes in Vienna in 1937, and a year
later their daughter, Ruth, who is my mother, was born
there.
PROLOGUE
An Invitation
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1946,
NUREMBERG’S PALACE OF JUSTICE
A LITTLE AFTER three o’clock in the afternoon, the wooden
door behind the defendant’s dock slid open and Hans Frank
entered courtroom 600. He wore a gray suit, a shade that
was offset by the white helmets worn by the two somberfaced military guards, his escorts. The hearings had taken a
toll on the man who had been Adolf Hitler’s personal
lawyer and then personal representative in Germanoccupied Poland, with his pink cheeks, sharp little nose,
and sleeked-back hair. Frank was no longer the slender and
swank minister celebrated by his friend Richard Strauss.
Indeed, he was in a considerable state of perturbation, so
much so that as he entered the room, he turned and faced
the wrong direction, showing his back to the judges.
Sitting in the packed courtroom that day was the
professor of international law at Cambridge University.
Balding and bespectacled, Hersch Lauterpacht perched at
the end of a long wooden table, round as an owl, flanked by
distinguished colleagues on the British prosecution team.
Seated no more than a few feet from Frank, in a trademark
black suit, Lauterpacht was the one who came up with the
idea of putting the term “crimes against humanity” into the
Nuremberg statute, three words to describe the murder of
four million Jews and Poles on the territory of Poland.
Lauterpacht would come to be recognized as the finest
international legal mind of the twentieth century and a
father of the modern human rights movement, yet his
interest in Frank was not just professional. For five years,
Frank had been governor of a territory that included the
city of Lemberg, where Lauterpacht had a large family,
including his parents, a brother and sister, their children.
When the trial had opened a year earlier, their fate in the
kingdom of Hans Frank was unknown.
Another man with an interest in the trial was not there
that day. Rafael Lemkin listened to the judgment on a
wireless, from a bed in an American military hospital in
Paris. A public prosecutor and then a lawyer in Warsaw, he
fled Poland in 1939, when the war broke out, and
eventually reached America. There he worked with the
trial’s American prosecution team, alongside the British.
On that long journey, he carried a number of valises, each
crammed with documents, among them many decrees
signed by Frank. In studying these materials, Lemkin found
a pattern of behavior, to which he gave a label, to describe
the crime with which Frank could be charged. He called it
“genocide.” Unlike Lauterpacht, with his focus on crimes
against humanity, which aimed at the protection of
individuals, he was more concerned with the protection of
groups. He had worked tirelessly to get the crime of
genocide into Frank’s trial, but on this last day of the trial
he was too unwell to attend. He too had a personal interest
in Frank: he had spent years in Lwów, and his parents and
brother were caught up in the crimes said to have been
committed on Frank’s territory.
“Defendant Hans Frank,” the president of the tribunal
announced. Frank was about to learn whether he would
still be alive at Christmas, in a position to honor the
promise he had recently made to his seven-year-old son,
that all was fine and he would be home for the holiday.
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2014,
NUREMBERG’S PALACE OF JUSTICE
Sixty-eight years later I visited courtroom 600 in the
company of Hans Frank’s son Niklas, who was a small boy
when that promise was made.
Niklas and I began our visit in the desolate, empty wing
of the disused prison at the rear of the Palace of Justice, the
only one of the four wings that still stood. We sat together
in a small cell, like the one in which his father spent the
better part of a year. The last time Niklas had been in this
part of the building was in September 1946. “It’s the only
room in the world where I am a little bit nearer to my
father,” he told me, “sitting here and thinking of being him,
for about a year being in here, with an open toilet and a
small table and a small bed and nothing else.” The cell was
unforgiving, and so was Niklas on the subject of his father’s
actions. “My father was a lawyer; he knew what he did.”
Courtroom 600, still a working courtroom, was not
greatly changed since the time of the trial. Back in 1946,
the route from the cells required each of the twenty-one
defendants to travel up a small elevator that led directly to
the courtroom, a contraption that Niklas and I were keen to
see. It remained, behind the dock at which the defendants
sat, entered through the same wooden door, which slid
open as noiselessly as ever. “Open, shut, open, shut,” wrote
R. W. Cooper of The Times of London, the former lawn
tennis correspondent who reported each day on the trial.
Niklas slid the door open and entered the small space, then
closed the door behind him.
When he came back out, he made his way to the place
where his father sat during the trial, charged with crimes
against humanity and genocide. Niklas sat down and
leaned forward on the wooden rail. He looked at me, then
around the room, and then he sighed. I had often wondered
about the last time his father passed through the elevator’s
sliding door and made his way to the defendant’s dock. It
was something to be imagined and not seen, because
cameras were not allowed to film the last afternoon of the
trial, on Tuesday, October 1, 1946. This was done to protect
the dignity of the defendants.
Niklas interrupted my thoughts. He spoke gently and
firmly. “This is a happy room, for me, and for the world.”
—
Niklas and I were together in courtroom 600 because of an
invitation I had unexpectedly received several years earlier.
It came from the law faculty of the university in the city
now known as Lviv, an invitation to deliver a public lecture
on my work on crimes against humanity and genocide.
They asked me to talk about the cases in which I’d been
involved, about my academic work on the Nuremberg trial,
and about the trial’s consequences for our modern world.
I had long been fascinated by the trial and the myths of
Nuremberg, the moment in which it was said our modern
system of international justice came into being. I was
mesmerized by odd points of detail to be found in the
lengthy transcripts, by the grim evidence, drawn to the
many books and memoirs and diaries that described in
forensic detail the testimony that was laid before the
judges. I was drawn to the images, the photographs and
black-and-white newsreels and movies like Judgment at
Nuremberg, the 1961 Oscar winner made memorable by its
subject and Spencer Tracy’s momentary flirtation with
Marlene Dietrich. There was a practical reason for my
interest, because the trial’s influence on my work had been
profound: the Nuremberg judgment blew a powerful wind
into the sails of a germinal human rights movement. Yes,
there was a strong whiff of “victor’s justice,” but there was
no doubting that the case was catalytic, opening the
possibility that the leaders of a country could be put on
trial before an international court, something that had
never happened before.
Most likely it was my work as a barrister, rather than my
writings, that prompted the invitation from Lviv. In the
summer of 1998, I had been peripherally involved in the
negotiations that led to the creation of the International
Criminal Court (ICC), at a meeting in Rome, and a few
months later I worked on the Pinochet case in London. The
former president of Chile had claimed immunity from the
English courts for charges of genocide and crimes against
humanity laid against him by a Spanish prosecutor, and he
had lost. In the years that followed, other cases allowed the
gates of international justice to creak open, after a period
of quiescence in the Cold War decades that followed the
Nuremberg trial.
Cases from the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda soon
landed on my desk in London. Others followed, relating to
allegations in the Congo, Libya, Afghanistan, Chechnya,
Iran, Syria and Lebanon, Sierra Leone, Guantánamo, and
Iraq. The long and sad list reflected the failure of good
intentions aired in Nuremberg’s courtroom 600.
I became involved in several cases of mass killing. Some
were argued as crimes against humanity, the killings of
individuals on a large scale, and others gave rise to
allegations of genocide, the destruction of groups. These
two distinct crimes, with their different emphases on the
individual and the group, grew side by side, yet over time
genocide emerged in the eyes of many as the crime of
crimes, a hierarchy that left a suggestion that the killing of
large numbers of people as individuals was somehow less
terrible. Occasionally, I would pick up hints about the
origins and purposes of the two terms and the connection
to arguments first made in courtroom 600. Yet I never
inquired too deeply as to what had happened at
Nuremberg. I knew how these new crimes had come into
being, and how they subsequently developed, but little
about the personal stories involved, or how they came to be
argued in the case against Hans Frank. Nor did I know the
personal circumstances in which Hersch Lauterpacht and
Rafael Lemkin developed their distinct ideas.
The invitation from Lviv offered a chance to explore that
history.
—
I seized it for another reason: my grandfather Leon
Buchholz was born there. I knew my mother’s father for
many years—he died in 1997 in Paris, a city he loved and
called home—but I knew little about the years before 1945,
because he did not wish to talk of them. His life spanned
the entire twentieth century, and by the time I knew him,
his family had diminished in size. That I understood, but
not the extent or the circumstances. A journey to Lviv was
a chance to learn more about those painful years.
A few scraps of information were available, but for the
most part Leon locked the first half of his life into a crypt.
They must have been significant for my mother in the years
after the war, but they were also important for me, events
that left lingering traces and many unanswered questions.
Why had I chosen the path of the law? And why law of the
kind that seemed to be connected to an unspoken family
history? “What haunts are not the dead, but the gaps left
within us by the secrets of others,” the psychoanalyst
Nicolas Abraham wrote of the relationship between a
grandchild and a grandparent. The invitation from Lviv was
a chance to explore those haunting gaps. I accepted it, then
spent a summer writing the lecture.
—
A map showed Lviv to be right in the center of Europe, not
easily accessible from London. It stood at the midpoint of
imaginary lines, connecting Riga to Athens, Prague to Kiev,
Moscow to Venice. It was the epicenter of the fault lines
that divided east from west, north from south.
Over the course of a summer, I immersed myself in the
literature about Lviv. Books, maps, photographs, newsreels,
poems, songs, in fact anything I could find about the city of
“blurred borders,” as the writer Joseph Roth called it. I was
particularly interested in the first years of the twentieth
century, when Leon lived in this city of bright colors, the
“red-white, blue-yellow and a touch of black-gold” of Polish,
Ukrainian, and Austrian influences. I encountered a city of
mythologies, a place of deep intellectual traditions where
cultures and religions and languages clashed among the
groups that lived together in the great mansion that was
the Austro-Hungarian Empire. World War I collapsed the
mansion, destroying an empire and unleashing forces that
caused scores to be settled and much blood to be spilled.
The Treaty of Versailles, the Nazi occupation, and Soviet
control combined in quick succession to work their
mischiefs. The “red-white” and “black-gold” faded, leaving
modern Lviv with a Ukrainian population, a city now
dominated by “blue-yellow.”
—
Between September 1914 and July 1944, control of the city
changed eight times. After a long spell as the capital of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire’s “Kingdom of Galicia and
Lodomeria and the Grand Duchy of Kraków with the
Duchies of Auschwitz and Zator”—yes, it is that Auschwitz
—the city passed from the hands of Austria to Russia, then
back to Austria, then briefly to the Western Ukraine, then
to Poland, then to the Soviet Union, then to Germany, then
back to the Soviet Union, and finally to Ukraine, where
control resides today. The kingdom of Galicia on whose
streets Leon walked as a small boy was one shared by
Poles, Ukrainians, Jews, and many others, yet by the time
Hans Frank entered courtroom 600 on the last day of the
Nuremberg trial, which was less than three decades later,
the entire Jewish community had been extinguished, and
the Poles were being removed.
The streets of Lviv are a microcosm of Europe’s turbulent
twentieth century, the focus of bloody conflicts that tore
cultures apart. I have come to love the maps of those years,
with streets whose names often changed, although the
course they followed did not. One park bench, a fine art
nouveau relic from the Austro-Hungarian period, was a
place that I came to know well. From here I could watch
the world go by, a fine vantage point on the city’s changing
history.
In 1914, the bench was in the Stadtpark, the city park. It
stood across from the grand Landtagsgebäude, the
parliament of Galicia in the easternmost province of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire.
A decade later, the bench hadn’t moved, but it was in a
different country, in Poland, in Park Kościuszki. The
parliament had disappeared, but not the building, now the
home of the Jan Kazimierz University. In the summer of
1941, as Hans Frank’s General Government took control of
the city, the bench was Germanized, now in the
Jesuitengarten across from a former university building
now stripped of its Polish identity.
Those interwar years were the subject of a significant
literature, but no work described more evocatively what
had been lost than Mój Lwów (My Lwów). “Where are you
now, park benches of Lwów, blackened with age and rain,
coarse and cracked like the bark of mediaeval olive trees?”
the Polish poet Józef Wittlin inquired in 1946.
Six decades later, when I arrived at the bench on which
my grandfather could have sat a century earlier, I was in
the Ivan Franko Park, named in honor of a Ukrainian poet
who wrote detective novels and whose name now graced
the university building.
Wittlin’s idyllic reminiscence, in its Spanish and German
translations, became my companion, a guide across the old
city and the buildings and streets scarred by the fighting
that erupted in November 1918. That vicious conflict,
between Polish and Ukrainian communities with Jews
caught or targeted in the middle, was grave enough to be
reported in The New York Times. It caused the U.S.
president, Woodrow Wilson, to set up a commission of
inquiry. “I do not wish to disturb the wounds on the living
body of these memories, and so I won’t talk about 1918,”
Wittlin wrote, and then proceeded to do exactly that. He
evoked “fratricidal fighting between Poles and Ukrainians”
that cut the city into parts, leaving many caught between
the warring factions. Yet common courtesies remained, as a
Ukrainian school friend briefly halted the fighting near the
bench on which I sat to allow young Wittlin to pass and
make his way home.
“Harmony reigned among my friends, although many of
them belonged to different ethnicities that were at
loggerheads, and professed different faiths and views,”
wrote Wittlin. Here was the mythical world of Galicia,
where National Democrats loved Jews, socialists tangoed
with conservatives, Old Ruthenians and Russophiles wept
alongside Ukrainian nationalists. “Let’s play at idylls,”
Wittlin wrote, evoking “the essence of being a Lvovian.” He
depicted a city that was sublime and loutish, wise and
imbecilic, poetic and mediocre. “The flavor of Lwów and its
culture is tart,” he concluded wistfully, like the taste of an
unusual fruit, the czeremcha, a wild cherry that ripened
only in Lwów’s Klepary suburb. Wittlin called the fruit a
cerenda, bitter and sweet. “Nostalgia even likes to falsify
flavours too, telling us to taste nothing but the sweetness of
Lwów today. But I know people for whom Lwów was a cup
of gall.”
The bitterness festered after World War I, suspended but
not settled at Versailles. Periodically, it flared up with a
vengeance, as when the Soviets rolled into town on white
horses in September 1939 and again two years later with
the arrival of the Germans in their tanks. “In early August
1942 Governor General Dr. Frank arrived in Lvov,” a Jewish
resident recorded in a rare surviving diary. “We knew that
his visit did not bode well.” That month, Hans Frank,
Hitler’s lawyer of choice and now Governor General of
occupied Poland, ascended the marble steps of the
university building to deliver a lecture in the great hall in
which he announced the extermination of the city’s Jews.
—
I arrived in Lviv in the autumn of 2010 to deliver my
lecture. By then, I had unearthed a curious and apparently
unremarked fact: the two men who put crimes against
humanity and genocide into the Nuremberg trial, Hersch
Lauterpacht and Rafael Lemkin, had been residents of the
city in the period of which Wittlin wrote. Both men studied
at the university, experiencing the bitterness of those years.
This would not be the last of many coincidences that
passed across my desk, but it would always be the one that
cut deepest. How remarkable that in preparing a journey to
Lviv to talk about the origins of international law, I learned
that the city itself was intimately connected to those
origins. It seemed more than just a coincidence that two
men who did more than any others to create the modern
system of international justice should have origins in the
same city. Equally striking was the sense that in the course
of that first visit, not a single person I met at the university,
or indeed anywhere in the city, was aware of its role in the
founding of the modern system of international justice.
The lecture was followed by questions, generally directed
to the lives of the two men. On what streets did they live?
What courses did they take at the university, and who were
their teachers? Did they meet or know each other? What
happened in the years after they left the city? Why did no
one talk about them at the law faculty today? Why did one
of them believe in the protection of individuals and the
other in the protection of groups? How had they become
involved in the Nuremberg trial? What became of their
families?
I didn’t have answers to these questions about
Lauterpacht and Lemkin.
Someone then asked a question I could answer.
“What’s the difference between crimes against humanity
and genocide?”
“Imagine the killing of 100,000 people who happened to
come from the same group,” I explained, “Jews or Poles in
the city of Lviv. For Lauterpacht, the killing of individuals, if
part of a systematic plan, would be a crime against
humanity. For Lemkin, the focus was genocide, the killing
of the many with the intention of destroying the group of
which they were a part. For a prosecutor today, the
difference between the two was largely the question of
establishing intent: to prove genocide, you needed to show
that the act of killing was motivated by an intent to destroy
the group, whereas for crimes against humanity no such
intent had to be shown.” I explained that proving intent to
destroy a group in whole or in part was notoriously
difficult, since those involved in such killings tended not to
leave a trail of helpful paperwork.
Does the difference matter? someone else asked. Does it
matter whether the law seeks to protect you because you
are an individual or because of the group of which you
happen to be a member? That question floated around the
room, and it has remained with me ever since.
Later in the evening, a student approached me. “Can we
speak privately, away from the crowd?” she whispered. “It’s
personal.” We moved toward a corner. No one in the city
knew or cared about Lauterpacht and Lemkin, she said,
because they were Jews. They were tainted by their
identities.
Maybe, I responded, not knowing where she was headed.
She said, “I want to let you know that your lecture was
important to me, personally important for me.”
I understood what she was telling me, sending a signal
about her own roots. Whether a Pole or a Jew, this was not
a matter to be spoken of openly. Issues of individual
identity and group membership were delicate in Lviv.
“I understand your interest in Lauterpacht and Lemkin,”
she continued, “but isn’t your grandfather the one you
should be chasing? Isn’t he the one closest to your heart?”
PART I
Leon
1
MY EARLIEST MEMORY of Leon dates back to the 1960s, when
he was living in Paris with his wife, Rita, my grandmother.
They lived in a two-bedroom apartment with a tiny kitchen
on the third floor of a worn nineteenth-century building.
Halfway up the rue de Maubeuge, the home was dominated
by a musty smell and the sound of trains from the Gare du
Nord.
Here were some of the things I could recall.
There was the bathroom with pink-and-black tiles. Leon
spent a great deal of time here, sitting on his own,
occupying a small space behind a plastic curtain. This was
a no-go area for me and my more curious younger brother.
Occasionally, when Leon and Rita were out shopping, we’d
sneak into the forbidden space. Over time, we became
more ambitious, examining items on the wooden table that
served as his desk in a corner of the bathroom, on which
scattered indecipherable papers lay, in French or more
foreign languages (Leon’s handwriting was different from
anything we’d seen, spidery words stretched across the
page). The desk was also littered with watches, old and
broken, which fed our belief that our grandfather was a
smuggler of timepieces.
Occasional visitors would arrive, elderly ladies with odd
names and faces. Madame Scheinmann stood out, dressed
in black with a strip of brown fur that hung off the
shoulder, a petite face powdered white and a smear of red
lipstick. She spoke in a strangely accented whisper, mostly
of the past. I didn’t recognize the language (it was Polish, I
later learned).
The absence of photographs was another memory. I
recalled only one, a black-and-white photograph that stood
proud in a beveled glass frame above the unused fireplace:
Leon and Rita on their wedding day in 1937. Rita wasn’t
smiling in the photograph, or later when I knew her,
something I noticed early and never forgot. There seemed
to be no scrapbooks or albums, no pictures of parents or
siblings (long gone, I was told), and no family memories on
public display. There was a black-and-white television, odd
copies of Paris Match, which Rita liked to read, but no
music.
The past hung over Leon and Rita, a time before Paris,
not to be talked about in my presence or in a language I
understood. Today, more than forty years later, I realize
with a sense of shame that I never asked Leon or Rita
about their childhoods. If curiosity existed, it was not
permitted to express itself.
There was a silence about the flat. Leon was easier than
Rita, who gave the impression of being detached. She spent
time in the kitchen, often preparing my favorite Wiener
schnitzel and mashed potato. Leon liked to wipe his plate
with a piece of bread, so clean it didn’t need to be washed.
A sense of order and dignity abounded, and pride. A
family friend who had known Leon since the 1950s
remembered my grandfather as a man of restraint. “Always
in a suit, beautifully turned out, discreet, never wanting to
impose himself.”
Leon encouraged me in the direction of the law. In 1983,
when I graduated from university, he offered me a gift of an
English-French legal dictionary. “For your entry into a
professional life,” he scrawled on the flyleaf. A year later,
he sent me a letter with a cutting from Le Figaro, an
advertisement
looking
for
an
English-speaking
international lawyer in Paris. “Mon fils,” he would say, what
about this? “My son.” That was what he called me.
Only now, many years later, have I come to understand
the darkness of the events through which Leon lived before
this time, to emerge with a dignity intact, with warmth and
a smile. He was a generous, passionate man, with a fiery
temper that sometimes burst forth unexpectedly and
brutally, a lifelong socialist who admired the French prime
minister Léon Blum and loved soccer, an observant Jew for
whom religion was a private matter not to be imposed on
others. He was uninterested in the material world and
didn’t want to be a burden on anybody. Three things
mattered to him: family, food, and home.
I had plenty of happy memories, yet Leon and Rita’s
home never seemed to me to be a place of joy. Even as a
young boy, I could sense the heaviness, a tension that hung
around the rooms, of foreboding and silence. I would visit
once a year, and I still recall the absence of laughter.
French was spoken, but if the subject was private, my
grandparents reverted to German, the language of
concealment and history. Leon didn’t seem to have a job, or
not the kind that required an early morning departure. Rita
didn’t work. She kept things tidy, so the edge of the rug in
the living room was always straight. How they paid the bills
was a mystery. “We thought he smuggled watches in the
war,” my mother’s cousin told me.
What did I know?
That Leon was born in a distant place called Lemberg
and moved to Vienna when he was a young boy. It was a
period he would not talk about, not with me. “C’est
compliqué, c’est le passé, pas important.” That was all he
said: it’s complicated, it’s the past, not important. Best not
to pry, I understood, a protective instinct. Of his parents
and a brother and two sisters, there reigned a complete
and impenetrable silence.
What else? He married Rita in 1937 in Vienna. Their
daughter, Ruth, my mother, was born a year later, a few
weeks after the Germans arrived in Vienna, to annex
Austria and impose the Anschluss. In 1939, he moved to
Paris. After the war, he and Rita had a second child, a son
they called Jean-Pierre, a French name.
Rita died in 1986, when I was twenty-five.
Jean-Pierre died four years later, in a car accident, with
both his children, my cousins.
Leon came to my wedding in New York in 1993 and died
four years later, in his ninety-fourth year. He took Lemberg
to the grave, along with a scarf given to him by his mother
in January 1939. It was a parting gift from Vienna, my
mother told me as we bade him adieu.
This was what I knew when I received the invitation from
Lviv.
2
A FEW WEEKS BEFORE the journey to Lviv, I sat with my
mother in her bright living room in north London, two old
briefcases before us. They were crammed with Leon’s
photographs and papers, newspaper clippings, telegrams,
passports, identity cards, letters, notes. Much dated to
Vienna, but some documents went back further, to Lemberg
days. I examined each item with care, as a grandson but
also as a barrister who loves the muck of evidence. Leon
must have kept certain items for a reason. These mementos
seemed to hold hidden information, coded in language and
context.
I put a small group of items of special interest to one
side. There was Leon’s birth certificate, which confirmed
his birth in Lemberg on May 10, 1904. The document also
offered an address. There was family information, that his
father (my great-grandfather) was an innkeeper named
Pinkas, which could be translated as Philip or Philippe.
Leon’s mother, who was my great-grandmother, was called
Amalie, known as Malke. She was born in 1870 in Żółkiew,
about fifteen miles west of Lemberg. Her father, Isaac
Flaschner, was a corn merchant.
—
Other documents made their way into the pile.
A worn Polish passport, old and faded, light brown, with
an imperial eagle on the cover. Issued to Leon in June 1923
in Lwów, it described him as a resident of the city. I was
surprised, having believed him to be Austrian.
Another passport, this one a dark gray, a shock to behold.
Issued by the Deutsche Reich in Vienna in December 1938,
this document had another eagle on the cover, this one
perched on a golden swastika. This was a Fremdenpass, a
travel pass, issued to Leon because he’d been stripped of
his Polish identity and made stateless (staatenlos), deprived
of nationality and the rights it offered. There were three
such passes among Leon’s papers: a second issued to my
mother, in December 1938, when she was six months old,
and a third that went to my grandmother Rita three years
later, in Vienna, in the autumn of 1941.
I added more items to the pile.
A small scrap of thin yellow paper, folded in half. One
side was blank; the other contained a name and address
written firmly in pencil, in a writing that was angular. “Miss
E. M. Tilney, Norwich, Angleterre.”
Three small photographs, each of the same man, taken in
a formal pose, with black hair, strong eyebrows, and a
faintly mischievous air. He wears a pin-striped suit and is
partial to bow ties and handkerchiefs. On the back of each,
a different date seems to have been written in the same
hand: 1949, 1951, 1954. There is no name.
My mother told me she didn’t know who Miss Tilney was
or the identity of the man in the bow tie.
I added a fourth photograph to the pile, a larger one but
also in black and white. It showed a group of men, some of
whom are in uniforms, walking in a procession, among
trees and large white flowers. Some look toward the
camera; others have a more furtive air, and one I
recognized immediately: the tall man right at the center of
the picture, a leader in a military uniform that I imagine to
be green, and tightly around his waist is a black belt. I
know this man, and the one who is standing behind him,
the indistinct face of my grandfather Leon. On the back of
the photograph, Leon wrote “de Gaulle, 1944.”
I took these documents home. Miss Tilney and her
address hung on the wall above my desk, alongside the
photograph of 1949, the man in a bow tie. I gave de Gaulle
the distinction of a frame.
3
I LEFT LONDON for Lviv in late October, during a gap in my
work schedule, after a hearing in The Hague, a case
brought by Georgia against Russia claiming racial
discrimination against a group. Georgia, my client, alleged
that ethnic Georgians in Abkhazia and South Ossetia were
being mistreated in violation of an international
convention. I spent much of the first flight, from London to
Vienna, reviewing the pleadings in another case, brought
by Croatia against Serbia, on the meaning of “genocide.”
The allegation related to killings that occurred in Vukovar
in 1991, which led to the filling of one of the largest mass
graves in Europe since 1945.
I traveled with my mother (skeptical, anxious), my
widowed aunt Annie, who had been married to my mother’s
brother (calm), and my fifteen-year-old son (curious). In
Vienna, we boarded a smaller plane for the four-hundredmile trip east, across the invisible line that once marked
the Iron Curtain. To the north of Budapest, the plane
descended over the Ukrainian spa town of Truskavets,
through a cloudless sky, so we could see the Carpathian
Mountains and, in the distance, Romania. The landscape
around Lviv—the “bloodlands” described by one historian
in his book on the terrors visited upon the area by Stalin
and Hitler—was flat, wooded, and agricultural, a scattering
of fields pockmarked with villages and smallholdings,
human habitations in red, brown, and white. We must have
passed directly over the small town of Zhovkva as Lviv
came into sight, a distant sprawl of an ex-Soviet metropolis,
and then the center of the city, the spires and domes that
jumped “out of the undulating greenery, one after another,”
the towers of places I would come to know, “of St.
George’s, St. Elizabeth’s, the Town Hall, the Cathedral, the
Korniakt and the Bernardine” that were so dear to Wittlin’s
heart. I saw without knowing them the cupolas of the
Dominican church, the City Theater, the Union of Lublin
Mound, and the bald, sandy Piaskowa Hill, which “soaked
up the blood of thousands of martyrs” during the German
occupation. All these places I would come to know.
The plane taxied to a stop before a low building. It would
not have been out of place in a Tintin book, as though we
were back in 1923, when the airport enjoyed the evocative
name of Sknyliv. There was a familial symmetry: the city’s
imperial railway station opened in 1904, the year of Leon’s
birth; the Sknyliv air terminal opened in 1923, the year of
his departure; the new air terminal emerged in 2010, the
year in which his descendants returned.
The old terminal hadn’t changed much in the intervening
century, with its marbled hall and large wooden doors and
the officious, fresh-faced guards dressed in green, à la The
Wizard of Oz, barking orders without authority. We
passengers stood about in a long line that snaked slowly
toward a patch of wooden cubicles, occupied by grim
immigration officers, each under a giant ill-fitting green
cap.
“Why here?” the officer asked.
“Lecture,” I replied.
He stared blankly. Then he repeated the word, not once,
but three times.
“Lecture? Lecture? Lecture?”
“University, university, university,” I responded. This
prompted a grin, a stamp, and a right of entry. We
wandered through customs, past dark-haired men in shiny
black leather coats who smoked.
In a taxi, we headed to the old center, passing dilapidated
nineteenth-century buildings in the style of Vienna and the
great Ukrainian Catholic cathedral of St. George, past the
old Galician parliament, into the main thoroughfare,
bookended by the opera house and an impressive
monument to the poet Adam Mickiewicz. Our hotel was
close to the medieval center, on Teatralna Street, called
Rutowskiego by the Poles and Lange Gasse by the
Germans. To follow the names and maintain a sense of
historical bearing, I took to wandering around with three
maps: modern Ukrainian (2010), old Polish (1930), ancient
Austrian (1911).
On our first evening, we searched for Leon’s house. I had
an address from his birth certificate, an English translation
prepared in 1938 by one Bolesław Czuruk of Lwów.
Professor Czuruk, like many in that city, had a complicated
life: before World War II, he taught Slavic literature at the
university, then served as a translator for the Polish
Republic, helping hundreds of Lwów Jews to obtain false
papers during the German occupation. For these efforts, he
was repaid with a period of incarceration by the Soviets
after the war. With his translation, Professor Czuruk told
me that Leon was born at 12 Szeptyckich Street and that
he was delivered into the world by the midwife Mathilde
Agid.
Today Szeptyckich Street is known as Sheptyts’kykh
Street, close to St. George’s Cathedral. To walk there, we
circled
Rynok
Square,
admired
fifteenth-century
merchants’ houses, passed city hall and the Jesuit cathedral
(which was shuttered during the Soviet era, used as an
archive and book depository), then into a nondescript
square in front of St. George’s, from which the Nazi
governor of Galicia, Dr. Otto von Wächter, recruited
members of the “Waffen-SS Galician Division.”
From this square it was but a short walk to Sheptyts’kykh
Street, named in honor of Andrey Sheptytsky, the renowned
metropolitan archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic
Church who, in November 1942, published a pastoral letter
titled “Thou Shalt Not Murder.” No. 12 was a two-story
late-nineteenth-century building, with five large windows
on the first floor, next to a building with a large Star of
David spray painted onto a wall.
From the city archives, I would obtain a copy of the
construction plans and early permits. I learned that the
building was constructed in 1878, that it was divided into
six apartments, that there were four shared toilets, and
that there was an inn on the ground floor (perhaps the one
run by Leon’s father, Pinkas Buchholz, although a 1913 city
directory listed him as the proprietor of a restaurant a few
buildings up, at No. 18).
We entered the building. On the first floor, an elderly man
answered our knock, Yevgen Tymchyshn, born there in
1943, he told us, during German rule. The Jews had gone,
he added. The apartment was empty. Inviting us in, his
friendly yet shy wife proudly showed us around the
extended single room that was the couple’s home. We
drank black tea, admired pictures on the wall, talked of the
challenges of modern Ukraine. Behind the tiny kitchen at
the back of the house was a small balcony, where Yevgen
and I stood. He wore an old military cap, Yevgen and I
smiled, the sun shone, St. George’s Cathedral loomed as it
had in May 1904.
12 Sheptyts’kykh Street, Lviv, October 2012
4
LEON WAS BORN in this house, and his family roots led to
nearby Zhovkva, known as Żółkiew when his mother,
Malke, was born there in 1870. Our guide, Alex Dunai,
drove us through a misty, tranquil rural landscape of low
brown hills and scattered woods, towns and villages long
ago famed for their cheeses, sausages, or bread. Leon
would have taken the same road a century earlier, on visits
to the family, traveling by horse and cart, or maybe by train
from the new railway station. I tracked down an old Cook’s
railway timetable that included the line from Lemberg to
Żółkiew, which led to a place called Belzec, later to be the
site of the first permanent extermination camp to use gas
as an instrument of mass killing.
I found only a single family photograph from that period
of Leon’s childhood, a studio portrait with a painted
background. Leon must have been about nine years old,
seated in front of his brother and two sisters, between his
parents.
Everyone looked serious, especially Pinkas the innkeeper,
with his black beard and the garb of a devout Jew, staring
quizzically into the camera. Malke looked tense and formal,
a buxom and well-coiffed lady in a lace-edged dress and
heavy necklace. An open book sat in her lap, a nod to the
world of ideas. Emil was the oldest child, born in 1893, in a
military collar and uniform, about to go off to war and
death, although he didn’t yet know. Next to him stood
Gusta, younger by four years, elegant and an inch taller
than her brother. In front of her was Laura, the younger
sister, born in 1899, holding on to the arm of the chair. My
grandfather Leon was at the front, a small boy in a sailor’s
uniform, eyes wide open, ears protruding. Only he smiled
as the lens clicked, as though he didn’t know what the
others did.
Buchholz family, Lemberg, ca. 1910 (from left to right:
Pinkas, Gusta, Emil, Laura, and Malke, with Leon at the
front)
In a Warsaw archive, I came across birth certificates for
the four children. All were born in the same Lemberg
house, each introduced into the world by the midwife
Mathilde Agid. Emil’s birth certificate was signed by
Pinkas, which stated that the father was born in 1862 in
Cieszanów, a small town to the northeast of Lemberg. The
Warsaw archive threw up a marriage certificate for Pinkas
and Malke, a civil ceremony conducted in Lemberg in 1900.
Only Leon was born in civil wedlock.
Archival material pointed to Żółkiew as the family hub.
Malke and her parents were born there, she the first of five
children and the only girl. In this way, I learned of Leon’s
four uncles—Josel (born in 1872), Leibus (1875), Nathan
(1877), and Ahron (1879)—all married with children, which
meant Leon had a large family in Żółkiew. Malke’s uncle
Meijer also had many children, providing Leon with a
multitude of second and third cousins. On a conservative
count, Leon’s Żółkiew family, the Flaschners, numbered in
excess of seventy individuals—1 percent of the town’s
population. Leon never mentioned any of these people to
me, in all the years I knew him. He always seemed to be a
man who stood alone.
Żółkiew flourished under the Habsburgs, a center of
commerce, culture, and learning, important still in Malke’s
day. Established five centuries earlier by Stanisław
Żółkiewski, a renowned Polish military leader, it was
dominated by a sixteenth-century castle with a fine Italian
garden, which were both still standing in decrepitude. The
town’s numerous places of worship reflected its varied
population: Dominican and Roman Catholic temples, a
Ukrainian Greek church, and, right at the center, a
seventeenth-century synagogue, the last reminder of
Żółkiew’s prominence in Poland as once being the only
place where Jewish books were printed. In 1674, the great
castle became the royal residence of Jan III Sobieski, the
Polish king who defeated the Turks at the Battle of Vienna
in 1683, ending three centuries of conflict between the
Ottomans and the Habsburg Holy Roman Empire.
Żółkiew, Lembergerstrasse, 1890
Żółkiew had a population of around six thousand when
Leon visited his mother’s family, made up of a mix of Poles,
Jews, and Ukrainians. Alex Dunai gave me a copy of an
exquisite town map, hand drawn in 1854. The palette of
greens and creams and reds, names and numbers etched in
black evoked a painting by Egon Schiele, The Artist’s Wife.
The detail was striking: each garden and tree marked,
every building numbered, from the royal castle at the
center (No. 1) to the lesser places on the outskirts (No.
810).
—
Joseph Roth described the layout of such a town. Typical
for the area, standing “in the middle of a great plain, not
bounded by any hill or forest or river,” it began with just a
few “little huts,” then a few houses, generally ordered
around two main streets, one that ran “from north to south,
the other from east to west.” A marketplace stood at the
intersection of the two roads, and invariably a railway
station was located “at the far end of the north–south
street.” This perfectly described Żółkiew. From a cadastral
record drawn up in 1879, I learned that Malke’s family
inhabited house No. 40 on parcel 762 of Żółkiew, a wooden
construction in which, most likely, she was born. It lay at
the western limit of the town, on east–west street.
In Leon’s day, the street was called Lembergstrasse. We
entered from the east, passing a large wooden church,
shown as the Heilige Dreyfaltigkeit on the map prepared
with much care in 1854. After the Dominican convent, on
our right, we entered the Ringplatz, the main square. The
castle came into view, close to St. Laurence’s Cathedral,
the burial place of Stanisław Żółkiewski and a few lesser
Sobieskis. A little beyond stood the Basilian convent,
crowning what must once have been a glorious space. On a
cold autumn morning the square and the town felt faded
and sad: a micro-civilization had become a place of
potholes and roaming chickens.
5
IN JANUARY 1913, Leon’s older sister Gusta left Lemberg for
Vienna, to marry Max Gruber, a Branntweinverschleisser
(seller of wine spirits). Pinkas attended the ceremony,
signing the marriage certificate against a backdrop of
unrest in the Balkans. Serbia had allied with Bulgaria and
Montenegro and, supported by Russia, gone to war against
the Ottoman Empire. A peace treaty was signed in London
in May 1913, offering new boundaries. Yet just a month
later, Bulgaria turned on Serbia and Greece, its former
allies, catalyzing the Second Balkan War, which lasted until
August 1913. This was a precursor to the greater upheavals
about to be unleashed on the region, as Bulgaria was
defeated by Serbia, which acquired new territories in
Macedonia, a matter seen as a threat to the all-powerful
Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Vienna concocted the idea of a preventive war against
Serbia, to rein in Russia and the Slavs. On June 28, 1914,
Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand in
Sarajevo. Within a month, Vienna had attacked Serbia,
prompting Germany to attack Belgium, France, and
Luxembourg. Russia entered the war alongside Serbia,
taking on Vienna and the Austro-Hungarian army and, by
the end of July, invading Galicia. In September 1914, The
New York Times reported that Lemberg and Żółkiew were
occupied by Russian forces, following a “most colossal
battle” that involved over a million and a half men. The
newspaper described a “thousandfold, cosmic destruction
and wrecking of human life, the most appalling holocaust
history had ever known.” One of the casualties was Leon’s
brother Emil, killed in action before he reached his
twentieth birthday. “What was a single murder,” Stefan
Zweig asked, within “the cosmic, thousandfold guilt, the
most terrible mass destruction and mass annihilation yet
known to history?”
Pinkas Buchholz fell into despair and died of a broken
heart just a few weeks later, overwhelmed by guilt for
having prevented his son Emil from immigrating to America
a year earlier. Despite my efforts, I found no more
information about the deaths of Pinkas and Emil, and no
graves, beyond confirmation in a Viennese archive that
Pinkas died in Lemberg on December 16, 1914. I was
unable to find where Emil fell. The Kriegsarchiv (War
Archive) in Vienna offered a crisp explanation that “no
personal files are available.” This was a quirk of history:
when the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed, the 1919
Treaty of Saint-Germain determined that all Galician files
were to remain in the various successor states. Most have
been lost.
In the space of three months, Leon had lost his father and
brother. At ten years old, he was the last man in the family.
He left for Vienna with his mother and sister Laura as
World War I pushed the family westward.
6
IN VIENNA, they moved in with Gusta and her husband, Max
Gruber. In September 1914, Leon enrolled at the local
Volksschule (elementary school) on Gerhardusgasse, in
Vienna’s 20th District. His school reports recorded his
mosaisch (Jewish) origins and modest academic abilities.
That month, a first child was born to Gusta and Max, Leon’s
niece Therese, known as Daisy. Leon lived with the Grubers
at 69 Klosterneuburger Strasse, close to school, in an
apartment on the first floor of a large building that was
later purchased by Max and Gusta, with the help of a
mortgage.
Leon’s family was one among the tens of thousands to
emigrate from Galicia to Vienna, a migration of Ostjuden,
eastern Jews. The war caused large numbers of Jewish
refugees to come to Vienna in search of a new home.
Joseph Roth wrote of the Nordbahnhof train station, “where
they all arrived,” its lofty halls infused with the “scents of
home.” The new inhabitants of Vienna made their way to
the Jewish districts of Leopoldstadt and Brigittenau.
Max Gruber outside his liquor store, 69 Klosterneuburger Strasse,
Vienna (ca. 1937)
In 1916, at the age of twelve, Leon graduated to the
nearby Franz Joseph Realschule. Throughout his life, he
held on to the Schülerausweiskarte, the school identity
card issued on December 19. A line in faded ink struck out
the words “Franz Joseph,” to indicate the death of the
emperor a few weeks earlier. The photograph shows a thin
boy in a dark, buttoned tunic. With his prominent ears, he
carries a defiant look, with arms crossed.
The Realschule, which specialized in math and physics,
was located at 14 Karajangasse, close to the family house.
Today it’s the Brigittenauer Gymnasium, and when I visited
with my daughter, she noticed the small plaque on the wall
near the entrance. It marked the use of the basement as a
Gestapo prison in 1938, a place of incarceration for Bruno
Kreisky, who became chancellor of Austria after the next
war. The school’s current director, Margaret Witek, found
the class registers for 1917 and 1919. These showed that
Leon did rather better in the sciences than in the arts, that
he spoke German to a “satisfactory” level, and that his
French was “good.”
Malke returned to Lwów after World War I, to an
apartment at 18 Szeptyckich Street, the building where
Pinkas had once run a restaurant. She left Leon in Vienna
under the guardianship of Gusta, who soon produced two
more nieces: Herta, born in 1920, then Edith in 1923. Leon
lived with them for several years, a youthful uncle for the
small girls, but he never spoke of them, to me at least. In
the meantime, his other sister, Laura, married Bernard
Rosenblum, a swing operator. In due course, Malke
returned to Vienna from Lwów.
The gaps in my knowledge about Leon’s family, in
Lemberg, Żółkiew, and Vienna, were gradually being filled
in. With family papers and public archives I had names,
ages, and places and even occupations. The family was
larger than I had known, a past that began to be defined.
7
IN 1923, Leon was studying electrical and technical
subjects and helping Uncle Max at the liquor store, hoping
to follow in his father’s educational footsteps. I found
photographs in his album, including one of a man who
seemed to be a teacher. He had a distinguished air, a man
with whiskers standing in a garden, a small wooden table
before him laden with the stuff of distillation, the burners,
bottles, and tubes. The teacher might begin with a liquid of
fermented grains, which contained ethanol. This liquid was
purified to produce a spirit, the liquor that emerged from
the process of separation.
The act of purification was the opposite of life in Vienna.
In hard economic times, with inflation rampant and
tensions high, new refugees arrived from the east in great
numbers. Political groupings struggled to form working
governments as conditions conspired to promote nationalist
and anti-immigrant feelings, along with a rising tide of antiSemitism. A local National Socialist German Workers’ Party,
which was formed in Austria in 1918, merged with its
German counterpart. The leader was a charismatic
Austrian named Adolf Hitler.
In the summer of 1923, two weeks after attending the
wedding of his sister Laura to Bernard Rosenblum, Leon
returned to Lwów to obtain a passport. Even after a decade
in Vienna, he discovered that he didn’t have Austrian
nationality. An obscure treaty signed in June 1919 on the
same day as the Treaty of Versailles, the Polish Minorities
Treaty, made Leon a Polish citizen.
Leon’s Polish passport
photograph, 1923
That treaty had been forced on Poland, imposing
obligations to protect minorities. An early precursor to
modern human rights conventions, Article 4 provided, in
effect, that anyone born in Lwów before the treaty was
signed in 1919 would be deemed a Polish citizen. There
were no forms to be completed, no applications to be made.
“Ipso facto and without requirement of any formality,” the
treaty declared, Leon and hundreds of thousands of other
citizens of Lwów and Żółkiew and other lands became
Polish citizens. A surprise and a nuisance, this legal quirk
would later save his life and that of my mother. My own
existence owed something to Article 4 of this Polish
Minorities Treaty.
Leon had left Austrian Lemberg on the eve of World War
I, before it was plunged into a murderous conflict between
Poles, Ukrainians, and Jews. By the time he returned to
collect a passport, the city was a thriving Polish metropolis,
filled with the rasping sound of trams and the “aromas of
patisseries, fruit sellers, colonial stores and Edward Riedl
and Julius Meinl’s tea and coffee shops.” The city entered a
period of relative stability after the end of the wars against
the Soviets and the Lithuanians. On June 23, 1923, the
Police Directorate of Lwów issued Leon’s new Polish
passport. It described a young man with blond hair and
blue eyes, although the photograph showed him in glasses
and dark hair. A natty dresser, he wore a dark jacket, a
white shirt, and a strikingly modern tie, with thick
horizontal stripes. Although he was nineteen years old, his
profession was listed as écolier, schoolboy.
He spent the rest of the summer in Lwów, with friends
and family, including his mother, who still lived on
Szeptyckich Street. In Żółkiew, he would have visited Uncle
Leibus and the large, extended family on Piłsudski Street,
in a wooden house a little north of the great synagogue
(decades later the street was a muddy path, the house long
gone). Leon could take to the hills around the town, passing
through fine local woods of oaks and birches on its eastern
edge, known as the borek. This was where the children of
Żółkiew often played, on the wide plain between low-lying
hills, along the main road to Lwów.
In August, Leon visited the Austrian consulate on the first
floor of 14 Brajerowska Street, near the university. In these
rented rooms, a last bastion of Austrian authority, he was
issued the stamp that allowed a single return trip to
Austria. The Czechoslovak consulate, located close to the
law faculty, offered a transit visa. Amid the hubbub, Leon
might have passed two other young men on the city streets,
early on career paths that would lead to significant roles in
the Nuremberg trial: Hersch Lauterpacht had left the city
in 1919, to study in Vienna, and might have been back to
visit his family and take forward his candidacy for the chair
in international law at Lwów University; Rafael Lemkin, a
student at the university’s law faculty, was living near
Malke, in the shadow of St. George’s Cathedral. This was
the formative period, touched by events in the city and
Galicia, in which the ideas on the role of the law in
combating mass atrocity were being formed.
Leon left Lwów at the end of August. He traveled by train
to Kraków, a ten-hour journey, then on to Prague and
Czechoslovakia’s southern border, at Břeclav. On the
morning of August 25, 1923, the train pulled in at the
Nordwestbahnhof. From there, Leon walked the short
distance to Gusta’s home on Klosterneuburger Strasse. He
never returned to Lwów or Żółkiew and, as far as I know,
never saw any member of that family again.
8
FIVE YEARS ON, Leon had become a distiller of spirits, with
his own shop at 15 Rauscherstrasse, in Vienna’s 20th
District. He kept one photograph from that period, taken in
March 1928, a time of renewed economic depression and
hyperinflation. It showed him and his brother-in-law Max
Gruber at the annual meeting of the Association of
Viennese Liquor Sellers. In the company of elderly men, he
was on the up, seated in a wood-paneled hall under a brass
candelabra with twenty-seven glass bulbs, the youngest
man present in a room without women, a regular guy,
twenty-four years old. A shadow of a smile passes his lips.
If times were anxious, they didn’t show on his face. Leon
retained the receipt issued to him by the association on the
day he became a member, April 27, 1926. For eight
schillings, he joined the alcohol establishment.
Leon and Max Kupferman,
Vienna, 1929
Eight decades later, I visited 15 Rauscherstrasse with my
daughter. We peered into the window of rooms being
refurbished, transforming the place into a club. A new oak
entrance door was being installed, with lyrics from a Led
Zeppelin song, “Stairway to Heaven,” carved into it.
There’s a feeling I get when I look to the west, the song
went, as my spirit cries for leaving.
Leon remained at 15 Rauscherstrasse for several years,
as political and economic unrest grew in Austria and the
environs. In his photo album, I found images suggesting a
carefree period of happiness and assimilation. There were
photographs of aunts and uncles and nieces, family
members without names, images of walking holidays with
friends. Several showed Leon with his closest friend, Max
Kupferman. Two dapper young men, laughing, often in suit
and tie, summers spent in the hills and lakes of Austria.
The two took excursions to nearby Leopoldsberg, north of
Vienna, and the Leopoldskirche, the church at the summit
with fine views over Vienna. I followed them up that hill, to
see for myself, a big hike. Sometimes they ventured farther
north, to the small town of Klosterneuburg on the Danube,
a place with an Augustine monastery, or west toward the
village of Pressbaum. The photographs were familiar and
modern, young men and women in bathing costumes, arms
entwined, intimate, carefree.
I came across images of family holidays, farther afield, to
Bodensdorf on Lake Ossiach, north of Trieste. There were a
few sporting moments, Max and Leon playing football, his
friend the more accomplished player, appearing for the
Whiskey Boys Football Club, an amateur team whose
matches
were
reported
in
the
Österreichische
Spirituosenzeitung.
They were images of a regular life, of Leon having
escaped his origins. There is “no harder lot than that of the
Eastern Jew newly arrived in Vienna,” Joseph Roth wrote of
the interwar years, yet Leon created a life among those
Jews who had “their feet safely pushed under desks in the
First District,” the ones that had “gone ‘native.’ ”
Seemingly on the up, he occupied a position between the
desk sitters and the Ostenjuden, politically active, a reader
of the socialist Neue Freie Presse (New Free Press), and a
supporter of the progressive Social Democrats, a party
distinct from the Christian Socialists and the German
Nationalists who placed identity, anti-Semitism, and
purification at the center of their political programs.
9
AT THE END of January 1933, President Paul von Hindenburg
appointed Adolf Hitler chancellor of Germany. Leon now
occupied a larger shop at 72 Taborstrasse, in the heart of
the Leopoldstadt district. As the liquor trade flourished, he
must have viewed events in neighboring Germany with
trepidation. The Reichstag was burned down, the Nazis
won the largest share of the vote in German federal
elections, Austrian Nazis gained ever more support.
Demonstrations in the Leopoldstadt were frequent and
violent.
Four months later, on Saturday, May 13, 1933,
representatives of the new German government made a
first visit to Austria. A tri-motored German government
plane landed at the Aspern Airfield, not far from Leon’s
shop. It carried seven Nazi ministers, led by Dr. Hans
Frank, the newly appointed Bavarian minister of justice,
Hitler’s former lawyer, and a confidant.
Frank’s arrival prompted demonstrations, with large
crowds of supporters, many of whom wore the white kneehigh socks that indicated support for the Nazis. The
Austrian chancellor, Engelbert Dollfuss, banned the
Austrian Nazi Party, and other measures followed. Dollfuss
was dead a little more than a year after Frank’s visit,
murdered in July 1934 by a group of Austrian Nazis led by
Otto von Wächter, a local lawyer who would, a decade later,
as Nazi governor in Lemberg, create the Waffen-SS
Galician Division.
Credit 9.1
Hans Frank (standing in car) arrives in Vienna, May 1933
I found little information on Leon’s life during these
turbulent days. He was a single man, and although the odd
document offered a snippet about his family, in his papers I
found no letters or other accounts, no details of political or
other activity. There were several photographs, later
inserted into an album in random fashion. Leon wrote
several words on the back of some, a date or a place. I
rearranged the images chronologically as best I could. The
earliest photograph, of his friend Max Kupferman, dated to
1924. Most were taken in the 1930s, but after 1938 the
images tailed off.
Several photographs were work related. A black-tie
gathering, men with their ladies, taken in December 1930,
with names and signatures on the back: Lea Sochi, Max
Kupferman, Bertl Fink, Hilda Eichner, Grete Zentner, a
Metzl, and a Roth. Another picture showed Leon outside his
brother-in-law
Max
Gruber’s
liquor
store,
on
Klosterneuburger Strasse. Others were of family members.
His cousins Herta and Edith Gruber outside their father’s
shop, on their way to school. His sister Gusta, elegant in a
black coat on a Viennese street. A note from his niece
Daisy, on holiday in Bodensdorf: “To my dear uncle…”
Three photographs of Malke, dressed in black, a widow
with a furrowed brow. Malke on a street, Malke in an
apartment, Malke walking with her son on Leopoldsberg. I
found only one image of Leon with his mother, taken in
1938, silhouetted with small trees.
Leon and Malke in Vienna, 1938
Several pictures showed Leon with friends, many in
Klosterneuburg in the 1930s. In bathing suits, men and
women laughed, touched, posed. Leon with an unnamed
woman, but no clue as to their relationship.
Max. Through the years, from 1924 to 1938, at least one
photograph a year of his best friend, a straight run. He was
a constant. Leon and Max on the banks of the Danube at
Kritzendorf, north of Vienna. Leon, Max, and a young
woman with a leather soccer ball at their feet. Leon and
Max hiking in the Wachau valley. Leon and Max standing, in
front of a shining black automobile. Leon and Max joking
around with a soccer ball. Max standing. Max in portrait.
Max laughing, smiling.
I noticed how elegant and well dressed Leon always was,
neat and dignified. On a Viennese street in a boater. In a
suit at a railway station, or maybe it was a marketplace. He
looked happy, usually with a smile, more so than the way I
remembered him in later years. At my wedding in New
York, in his ninetieth year, I recall seeing him sitting alone
in a reflective mood, as though looking back across a
century.
The last photograph of that period, of Leon’s bachelor
days, was of two attractive young women, on the streets.
They wore fur, and behind them, approaching in the
background, a storm cloud loomed.
10
THE DARKNESS GREW more ominous in 1937. Hitler denounced
various agreements on the protection of minorities, freeing
Germany from the constraints of international law and
allowing it to treat minority groups as it wished. Yet in
Vienna, daily life and love went on. At this moment, as
Europe stumbled toward war, Leon chose to marry.
Leon and Rita, wedding day,
May 1937
His bride was Regina Landes, the marriage celebrated on
May 23, 1937, at the Leopoldstempel, a fine Moorish-style
synagogue on Leopoldsgasse, the largest Jewish temple in
Vienna. My grandmother Rita emerged from nowhere. The
first image of her was in a white wedding dress.
I knew this photograph well, she in a flowing wedding
dress, holding white flowers, he in black tie. Neither of
them smiled on this happy day. This was the single
photograph on display in their apartment in Paris, the one I
often stared at as a child.
The bride was twenty-seven, Viennese and Austrian, the
daughter of Rosa Landes, a widow with whom she lived on
Habichergasse in the 16th District. The marriage was
witnessed by Leon’s brother-in-law Max and by Rita’s older
brother Wilhelm, a dentist. Malke attended with Gusta and
Laura, accompanied by their husbands and Leon’s four
nieces. Rita was given away by her mother and three
brothers: Wilhelm, his wife, Antonia, and their young son,
Emil; Bernhard and his wife, Susanne; and Julius. This was
Leon’s new Viennese family.
The Lembergers and Żółkiewers weren’t able to make the
trip to Vienna, but they sent telegrams. I found two.
“Wishing you much luck,” Uncle Leibus wrote from
Żółkiew. Another came from Uncle Rubin, in Lwów.
Leon kept these congratulatory telegrams, a record of the
secure, middle-class community of which the new couple
was a part. A world of doctors and lawyers, shopkeepers
and furriers, engineers and accountants, a world of
yesterday, about to disappear.
11
ON THE MORNING of March 12, 1938, the German Wehrmacht
entered Austria and marched into Vienna, met by huge and
enthusiastic crowds. Rita was five months pregnant on the
day Austria became a part of the Greater German Third
Reich. The Anschluss (linkup) followed a coup d’état by the
Austrian Nazi Party, to prevent a referendum on the
country’s independence from Germany. The “first great
breach of the peace,” the German writer Friedrich Reck
noted in his diary on March 20, 1938, in a state of despair.
It was a day on which “the criminal has been let go
unpunished and is thus made to appear more powerful than
he is.”
Three days later, Hitler arrived in Vienna to address a
vast crowd on the Heldenplatz. He stood alongside Arthur
Seyss-Inquart, the newly appointed governor, with Otto von
Wächter behind them, just returned from German exile.
Within days, a plebiscite ratified the takeover, and German
law was applied across Austria. A first transport of 151
Austrian opponents of the Nazis was taken from Vienna to
the Dachau concentration camp, near Munich. Jews were
harassed, forced to scrub the streets, then hit by new laws
that banned them from the universities and participation in
the professions. Within weeks, Jews were required to
register their assets, property, and businesses, a death
knell for the liquor stores run by Leon and brother-in-law
Max.
As businesses were confiscated without compensation,
Arthur Seyss-Inquart’s new government entrusted to Adolf
Eichmann the task of running the Zentralstelle für jüdische
Auswanderung, the body responsible for implementing the
“solution of the Jewish problem.” Persecution was
embraced as policy, along with “voluntary” emigration and
deportation. A Vermögensverkehrsstelle (asset transfer
office) transferred Jewish property to non-Jews. Another
commission oversaw the removal of Jews from public
positions in Austria, headed by Otto von Wächter.
Many Jews emigrated, or tried to do so, among them
Leon and his brothers-in-law on Rita’s side. Bernhard
Landes left first, with his wife, then Wilhelm’s family
followed in September 1938. They obtained tourist visas for
Australia but only got as far as London, where they
remained. Wilhelm’s son, Emil, was six. “I remember being
in your grandparents’ apartment on Taborstrasse, at
nighttime,” he recalled. “I remember marching feet outside
the building and a general sort of atmosphere of fear and
emotion around me.” He remembered too the September
night that his family left Vienna from the Westbahnhof. “I
looked down from the train compartment, which was high
up, and saw the worry and the crying faces, probably my
father’s mother [Rosa] was standing there, probably your
grandmother [Rita] was standing there. There were lots of
crying adults. They just stood there, crying.”
The brothers did what they could to obtain a visa for their
mother, Rosa, but no visa ever reached Vienna. Leon’s
three nieces, the daughters of Gusta and Max, did manage
to get out. Daisy, who was twenty-five, went to London to
study (she later immigrated to Palestine). Herta (who was
eighteen) and Edith (fifteen) together made their way to
Italy and then Palestine. Their parents, Gusta and Max,
remained in Vienna.
I located the form Leon filed with the Israelitische
Kultusgemeinde Wien (the Vienna Jewish Community), a
prerequisite of emigration. He declared himself to be a
“liquor and spirits” manufacturer who had studied
electrical and radio repairs and spoke Polish and German.
He was willing to go to Australia, Palestine, or America (the
only overseas relative identified was a “cousin” of Rita’s,
one P. Weichselbaum of Brooklyn, New York, a name I
didn’t recognize). He also applied for permission to
emigrate on behalf of his two dependents, Rita (who was
pregnant) and Malke. In the space left to declare his
financial and other resources, he offered a single word:
“None.” The shop on Taborstrasse was gone, along with the
stock. Leon was destitute.
On July 19, 1938, Rita gave birth to a daughter, Ruth, my
mother. Four months later, a lowly official at the German
embassy in Paris was murdered, unleashing Kristallnacht
and the destruction of Jewish property and businesses.
That night, November 9, the Leopoldstempel where Rita
and Leon were married was burned down, and thousands
were rounded up. Among the hundreds who were killed or
“disappeared” were two of Leon’s brothers-in-law. Max
Gruber was arrested on November 12, spending eight days
in prison before being released. He was forced to sell off
his shop and the building he owned with Gusta, and to do
so cheaply. Rita’s youngest brother, Julius Landes, was less
fortunate: he disappeared a few days after Kristallnacht,
never to be heard from again. The only trace that remained
was a single document, which revealed that a year later, on
October 26, 1939, he was transported eastward to a camp
near the town of Nisko, between Kraków and Lemberg.
Seven decades later, he remains a disappeared person.
Leon and Rita were ensnared. Within a week of
Kristallnacht, Rita was forced to change her name, and
birth and marriage certificates, with “Sara” being added to
indicate Jewish origins. For reasons that are unclear,
neither Leon nor their daughter was subjected to this
humiliation. On November 25, Leon was summoned to
appear before the authorities. The president of the Vienna
Police, Otto Steinhaus, issued an order of expulsion:
The Jew Buchholz Maurice Leon is required to leave the territory
of the German Reich by December 25, 1938.
Order expelling Leon from the Reich, November 26, 1938
Leon kept a copy of the order, but I only saw it when my
mother gave me his papers in preparation for our trip to
Lviv. The paper was folded in half, kept with a certificate of
good character that was issued by the head of the local
Jewish community. On a careful reading, I noticed that the
expulsion order was judicially confirmed, by the chief judge
of the Leopoldstadt district court.
12
THE EXACT CIRCUMSTANCE of Leon’s departure from Vienna
had always been a mystery, but I assumed he left for Paris
with his wife and daughter.
Passport No. 3814 was issued to his daughter, Ruth, on
December 23, 1938, suggesting she would leave with her
father. Below her photograph, overstamped with a
swastika, the space left for a signature was filled in by an
official: “The passport holder is unable to write.” Ruth was
six months old, identified as “small” and “stateless.”
Passport No. 3816 was issued on the same day to Leon,
on the authority of the president of the Vienna Police, the
same man who ordered his expulsion. Leon signed with a
large, proud, firm B. The document, like his daughter’s,
allowed travel within the country and abroad and described
Leon as “stateless.” He’d lost his Polish nationality—as
suddenly as it was obtained in 1919—a consequence of the
Polish foreign minister Józef Beck’s September 1934
speech to the Assembly of the League of Nations,
renouncing the 1919 Polish Minorities Treaty. The loss of
status would have one unintended benefit: as a stateless
individual, Leon could only be issued a foreigner’s passport
(a Fremdenpass), which was not required to be stamped
with a big red J, the mark of a Jew. Leon’s passport, as well
as that of his daughter, was not stamped with a red J.
The third passport would have been No. 3815, in Rita’s
name, but it was missing. The passport that was among
Leon’s papers that bore Rita’s name was issued much later,
in August 1941, three years after the others. It carried a
different number. Rita stayed behind, to care for her
mother, Rosa—at least that is what I was told. I had
assumed the period of separation was short, but now I
learned that it extended over three years. How did Rita
leave Vienna in late 1941? Ruth’s cousin Emil, who left
Vienna in September 1938, was surprised. “It was a
mystery, and it has always been a mystery,” he said quietly.
Had he known that Leon and Rita did not leave Vienna
together. “No, did they?” he asked. Did he know that Rita
remained in Vienna until the end of 1941? “No.”
I tried to find out what happened to passport No. 3815,
but without success. Most likely, it was issued to Rita, not
used, then discarded. A kind lawyer in Germany’s Federal
Foreign Office looked into the matter but found nothing in
the Federal Archives. “It would appear close to improbable
that this file is preserved in German public archival funds,”
he wrote.
Passports 3814 and 3816 offered a further surprise; they
revealed that Leon left without his daughter. The only
stamp in Leon’s passport from the currency office in Vienna
was dated January 2, 1939. Beyond that it was empty,
without anything to indicate when he left or the route he
took. His daughter’s passport, on the other hand, bore a
stamp to show that she left Austria much later, on July 22,
1939, entering France the following day. Because she did
not travel with her father, the obvious question was, who
accompanied the infant on the trip?
“I have absolutely no idea how your grandfather
contrived to get out of Vienna,” Ruth’s cousin Emil told me.
“Nor do I know how your grandfather got his daughter out
of Vienna, or how your grandmother escaped Vienna.”
13
LEON WAS thirty-four years old at the end of January 1939,
when he arrived alone in Paris, a place of safety even as
Prime Minister Édouard Daladier’s government faced up to
political realities, negotiating with Hitler and preparing to
recognize Franco’s government in Spain. Leon arrived with
a passport, a copy of the order expelling him from the
Reich, and two certificates, one of which confirmed his
good character, and the other attesting to the fact that he
ran a liquor store in Vienna from 1926 to 1938. He had no
money.
I had often imagined Leon’s escape from Vienna to Paris,
without knowing the details. After I attended a conference
in Vienna on the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in
Ukraine, a spur-of-the-moment decision took me to Vienna’s
rebuilt Westbahnhof station, where I bought a one-way,
overnight train ticket to Paris. I shared the compartment
with a young German woman. We talked about the war
years, their effect on our families, the sense of connection
with that past. It was an intimate journey, a moment of
acknowledgment and remembrance, and we never
exchanged names.
In Paris, I went to the building where Leon stayed when
he arrived, 11 rue de Malte, a four-story building behind
the Cirque d’Hiver, not far from place de la République.
From here, he made repeated applications to remain in
France, retaining the many rejection slips handed to him by
the Préfecture de Police, small pieces of paper covered in
blue ink. Given five days to leave, he challenged each
decision, every month for a year. Eventually, he received
permission to remain.
In July 1939, his infant daughter arrived in Paris. Where
they lived, and how he survived, I did not know. In August,
he rented a room at 29 rue de la Lune, a tall and thin
building on a narrow street, where he was living when
Germany invaded Poland on September 1. A few days later,
France and Britain declared war on Germany, making
communications with Rita difficult, because Vienna was in
enemy territory. No letters remained, just a photograph of
their daughter, sent to Rita in October. “Ruthi running to a
better future,” Leon wrote on the back. He added a few
affectionate words for other family members, unaware
they’d left for England.
Ruth, Paris, 1939
Leon, Barcarès, 1940
Leon entrusted his daughter to the care of others, then
enlisted in the French army to join the struggle against
Germany. The French military issued him an identity card
that described him as an “electrician.” In March 1940, he
joined the Troisième Régiment de Marche de Volontaires
Étrangers (RMVE; the Third Marching Regiment of Foreign
Volunteers), an offshoot of the Foreign Legion. A few days
later, he was transferred to a camp on the southwest coast,
near the Pyrenees and the border with Spain, based at
Camp Barcarès, a long strip of sand that divided the
Mediterranean from a voluminous freshwater pond. The
Seventh Company, of which he was a member, comprised
several thousand men drawn from across Europe. They
included Spanish Republicans and Communists and Jews
from Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. He kept a few
photographs, looking dandy in a large-brimmed hat,
breeches, and greatcoat.
Within a month, he was decommissioned, deemed too old
for combat at thirty-five. A few weeks later, Germany
marched into France, Belgium, and Holland, as Leon’s
former regiment was renamed the Twenty-Third RMVE and
sent north to active engagement against the Germans at
Soissons and Pont-sur-Yonne. Hostilities ended on June 22
with an armistice. The regiment was dissolved.
Leon was back in Paris when the Germans entered the
city on June 14, 1940, causing many Parisians to flee.
Within weeks, the roads outside Paris were deserted, and
an “air of venality” hovered over the capital, as German
soldiers took over the restaurants on the Champs-Élysées
and teenagers of the Gardes Françaises (a French
equivalent to the Hitler Youth) sold copies of Au Pilori, a
furiously anti-Semitic and anti-Freemason weekly that
called for the lynching of Léon Blum and Édouard Daladier.
Leon worked at a language school, the École Saint-Lazare
at 102 rue Saint-Lazare, making use of German-language
skills. In his papers, I found a note from the school’s
director, Monsieur Edmond Melfi, certifying his role as a
teacher. Ruth was sent into hiding outside Paris, to nearby
Meudon. She was two years old, able to walk but not speak,
hidden at a pouponnière, a private nursery called L’Aube de
la Vie, the “Dawn of Life.” It was the first of several places
of hiding, all traces of which evaporated from her memory.
For the next four years, my mother was a hidden child,
separated from her father, given the false name of Jocelyne
Tévé.
14
LEON KEPT ONLY one document that offered information on
the pouponnière, a postcard of a young woman with a big
smile. She wore a pin-striped jacket and a white shirt, with
a large black bow tie. Her hair was dark, pulled back
behind her head. She was pretty, and on the back of the
card she wrote a few words. “To Ruth’s father, with all my
friendship, S. Mangin, Director of the Pouponnière ‘L’Aube
de la Vie,’ Meudon (Saône et Oise).”
The town hall in Meudon directed me to the municipal
archivist, who located the nursery’s file. Between 1939 and
1944, Mademoiselle Mangin looked after several small
children at her premises at 3 rue Lavoisier, a small,
detached house with a small front garden, in the center of
town. “We have found no trace of Ruth Buchholz in the
register of children maintained by this ‘nourrice,’ ”
Madame Greuillet informed me. “Maybe she was declared
to the municipality under a different name,” something that
happened frequently. She sent me the names of all the
children who registered at the nursery between September
1938 (the first was Jean-Pierre Sommaire) and August 1942
(the last was Alain Rouzet). Of the twenty-five, eight were
girls. If Ruth was registered, it was under a secret name.
More likely, she was kept off the books.
15
IN ZHOVKVA, a thousand miles to the east of Paris, a woman
who lived on the street where Malke was born gave me
another account of the events of 1939. Olga was sixteen
years old when the Germans arrived in September 1939,
and at ninety she offered a clear firsthand account of the
occupation of Poland. She did so as she stood at a large urn
of boiling cabbages, protected from the autumn chill by a
layer of bright scarves, tightly wound.
“I’ll tell you the truth,” Olga said. “There were maybe ten
thousand people in Żółkiew, half Jewish, the rest Ukrainians
and Poles. The Jews were our neighbors; we were friends
with them. There was a doctor, he was respected, we went
to him. There was a watchmaker. They were honest, all of
them.”
Olga’s father got on with Jews. When Poland became
independent in 1919, he was arrested, because his first
wife—not Olga’s mother—was an active supporter of the
short-lived West Ukrainian People’s Republic, which existed
for less than a month, in November 1918 (we spoke shortly
before Russia occupied the Crimea, an act that would later
cause others I met in Ukraine to suggest that a western
republic might yet reemerge). “When my father was in
prison, the Jew Gelberg, his neighbor, took money and food
to the prison for him, because he was alone. So my father
was fine with the Jews.”
As our conversation meandered, Olga drank tea, tended
to the cabbages, and reminisced about the war.
“First the Germans came,” which scared the Jews. “The
Germans stayed in Żółkiew for a week, didn’t do much,
then left, back west. Then the Russians arrived in town.”
Olga was at school when the Soviets entered the town.
“It was a woman who came first, a beautiful woman
soldier on a great white horse who led the Soviets into
town. Then came the soldiers, then the big guns.”
She was curious about the artillery, but the woman on the
horse left a greater impression.
“She was beautiful, and she carried a big gun.”
For eighteen months, Żółkiew was under Soviet control, a
Communist-run municipality in which private enterprise
was eliminated. Other parts of Poland were occupied by
Nazi Germany, the General Government under the rule of
Governor-General Hans Frank. The division was agreed to
by Stalin and Hitler in the secret Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact,
a nonaggression agreement that divided Poland with a line
drawn to the west of Lemberg and Żółkiew, leaving Leon’s
family safe on the Soviet side. In June 1941, Germany broke
the pact, launching Operation Barbarossa. Its forces moved
eastward at speed, so by the end of June, Żółkiew and
Lemberg were under German control.
The return of the Germans brought fear to the Jews. Olga
remembered restrictions, the creation of the ghetto, and
the burning of the synagogue after they arrived. She didn’t
personally know the Flaschners, Malke’s family, but the
name rang a bell. “One was an innkeeper,” she said
suddenly, recalling that there were many with that name.
“They went into the town ghetto, all the Jews did,” she said
of Leon’s uncle Leibus, of the aunts and cousins, of all the
relatives, of the thirty-five hundred other Jews from the
town. In faraway Paris, Leon knew nothing of these events.
16
VIENNA IN THE SUMMER of 1941 was no less difficult for Rita.
Separated from Leon and her daughter for nearly three
years, she lived with her mother, Rosa, and mother-in-law,
Malke. Nothing in Leon’s papers shed any light on those
years, of which Rita never spoke, not to her daughter, not
to me. By other means, I traced some of what came next.
In September, an ordinance was passed requiring all Jews
in Vienna to wear yellow stars. The use of public
transportation was curtailed as they were prohibited from
leaving the area where they lived, without authorization.
The city archive in Vienna offered more details. After Leon
left, Rita was forced out of the Taborstrasse apartment. She
moved in with Malke; they lived first on Franz
Hochedlinger Gasse, then on Obere Donaustrasse, both in
the Leopoldstadt district, where many of the Jews lived.
Malke was evicted from the apartment she’d lived in for a
quarter of a century on Romanogasse and forced into a
“collective” apartment on Denisgasse. Deportations to the
east had been halted in October 1939, but in the summer of
1941, under the rule of Baldur von Schirach, the new
gauleiter of Vienna, rumors about a fresh wave of
deportations began to circulate.
On August 14, Rita was issued a Fremdenpass, a travel
pass valid for one year, allowing travel in and out of the
Reich. It bore no red J stamp, despite her being registered
as a Jew. Two months later, on October 10, the Vienna
police authorized her to make a one-way trip out of the
country, traveling via Hargarten-Falck in the Saarland on
the German border with France. The journey was to be
completed by November 9. The passport photograph was
strikingly sad, Rita with pursed lips and eyes full of
foreboding.
I found another copy of that photograph in Leon’s papers,
one she sent from Vienna to Paris. On the back, she had
written an inscription, “For my dearest child, for my golden
child.”
I was surprised that Rita, a registered Jew, could be
issued so late a document that allowed her to travel. An
archivist at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in
Washington described the journey as “improbable,” setting
out the multitude of steps she would have had to go
through to obtain the Fremdenpass, obstacles imposed by
Adolf Eichmann. The archivist directed me to a large chart
titled Die jüdische Wanderung aus der Ostmark, 1938–1939
(The Jewish migration from Austria, 1938–1939), as
prepared by Eichmann. A stateless person like Rita, who
lost her Austrian nationality after the Anschluss by reason
of her marriage to a now-stateless Jew, was required to
take even more steps than others.
To leave Vienna, Rita must have had help from someone
with connections. In October 1941, Eichmann and his
deputy Alois Brunner, who would soon move to Paris,
issued a raft of orders for large-scale Jewish deportations.
That month, some fifty thousand Jews were deported from
Vienna. Among them were Leon’s sister Laura and her
daughter, his thirteen-year-old niece, Herta Rosenblum.
The two were sent to Litzmannstadt (Lodz) on October 23.
Rita avoided deportation. She left Vienna on November 9.
The very next day “the borders of the German Reich were
closed for refugees,” all emigration ended, all departure
routes were blocked. Rita got out at the last minute. Her
escape was either very fortunate or based on assistance
from someone with inside information. I don’t know when
Rita arrived in Paris or how she made it there. The
Fremdenpass bore no stamps or other clues. Other
documents confirmed that by early 1942 she was in Paris,
reunited with her husband.
Malke was now the last member of Leon’s family in
Vienna. Her children and grandchildren having left the city,
her companion was Rosa Landes, Rita’s mother. The gaps
created by the silence of the family as to the events of that
time could be filled by documents available in numerous
archives, offering grim details, in black and white, of what
followed. But first, I wanted to see where these events
unfolded.
17
I TRAVELED TO Vienna with my fifteen-year-old daughter to
visit the addresses thrown up by the archives. Triggered by
school history lessons, she wanted to visit a “museum of
the Anschluss,” but no such institution existed. We made do
with the wall of a single room at the small, private, and
rather wonderful Third Man Museum, an homage to the
Orson Welles film that was one of Rita’s favorites, and
mine. The room traced the unhappy events from 1938 to
1945 by means of photographs, newspapers, and letters. A
copy of the voting form for the plebiscite that followed the
Anschluss, organized to ratify the union with Germany,
declared the support of the Catholic Church, firm and
unambiguous.
Later we walked through Viennese streets, to 69
Klosterneuburger Strasse, the building where Leon lived
when he arrived from Lemberg in 1914. Once the home of
his sister Gusta and brother-in-law Max, the liquor store
was now a convenience store. Close by was Leon’s school,
the Realschule on Karajangasse, and his first shop, on
Rauscherstrasse. We went to Taborstrasse, where Leon and
Rita lived together, the building where my mother was
born. The street was elegant, but No. 72 was among the
buildings destroyed by war. Later we stood outside 34
Rembrandtstrasse, Malke’s last Viennese home, a
Wohngemeinschaft (shared apartment) she occupied with
other elderly residents. It wasn’t too difficult to imagine the
last day, which began early in the morning of July 14, 1942,
the street closed by the SS to prevent escapes. “They are
going to take the whole street, whoever is a Jew,” a
panicked resident of a nearby street recalled as an SS man
marched around with a pizzle shouting, “Alle raus, alle
raus.”
Malke was seventy-two years old, allowed to travel east
with a single suitcase. Escorted to the Aspangbahnhof,
behind the Belvedere Schloss, she and other deportees
were spat at, jeered, and abused by spectators, who
applauded the departures. One comfort was that she was
not entirely alone, traveling with Rita’s mother, Rosa. It
was a haunting image, two elderly ladies on a platform at
the Aspangbahnhof, each hanging on to a small suitcase,
two among 994 elderly Viennese Jews heading east.
They traveled on Transport No. IV/4, a regular train with
a seat in a normal compartment with lunch boxes and
refreshments, a deceptively comfortable “evacuation.” The
journey lasted twenty-four hours and led to Theresienstadt,
sixty kilometers north of Prague. On arrival, they were
searched. The first hours were uncertain and traumatic,
waiting around, eventually directed to their quarters, a
single room, empty save for a few old mattresses on the
floor.
Rosa survived for a few weeks. According to a death
certificate she died on September 16 of pericolitis. It was
signed by Dr. Siegfried Streim, a dentist from Hamburg,
who spent two more years at Theresienstadt before being
deported to Auschwitz, where he died in the autumn of
1944.
A week after Rosa died, Malke was deported from
Theresienstadt on Transport Bq 402. By train, she headed
east, beyond Warsaw, entering the territory of Hans Frank.
The train journey extended over a thousand kilometers,
twenty-four hours locked into a cattle wagon with eighty
other frail, elderly Untermenschen. Among the 1,985 other
people who traveled on that transport were three of
Sigmund Freud’s sisters: seventy-eight-year-old Pauline
(Pauli), eighty-one-year-old Maria (Mitzi), and eighty-twoyear-old Regina (Rosa).
The train stopped at a camp, a mile and a half from the
railway station of the small town of Treblinka. The routine
that followed was well rehearsed, under the personal
direction of Commandant Franz Stangl. If she was still
alive, Malke would have joined the Freud sisters in getting
off the train within five minutes of its arrival. They were
ordered to line up on the platform, divided into separate
groups of men and women, forced to strip naked under the
threat of lashes. Jewish workers collected their discarded
clothes and carried them off to barracks. Those able to do
so walked naked into the camp, along Himmelfahrtstrasse,
the “street to heaven.” The women’s hair was shaved by
barbers, to be packed into bundles for the manufacture of
mattresses.
Reading an account of this process, I recalled a scene in
Claude Lanzmann’s film Shoah. Among the very few to
survive Treblinka, the barber Abraham Bomba was
interviewed as he cut a man’s hair, being pressed for
details of the task he carried out, matters that he plainly
did not wish to talk of. Bomba refused to answer, yet
Lanzmann persisted. Eventually, the barber cracked,
weeping as he described his own actions, the shaving of the
hair of women.
“I was obsessed by the last moments of those who were
to die,” Lanzmann wrote of his visit to Treblinka, “by their
first moments in the death camps.” Those moments were
taboo. The cutting of hair, the naked walk, the gas.
Malke’s life was over within fifteen minutes of stepping
off the train.
18
MALKE WAS MURDERED in the forest of Treblinka on
September 23, 1942, a point of detail about which Leon did
not learn until many years later. Within six months of her
death, her brother Leibus and the entire Flaschner family
in Żółkiew were also dead. While the exact circumstances
were not knowable, I learned about the fate of Żółkiew’s
Jews from one of the few Jewish residents to survive, Clara
Kramer, now a resident of Elizabeth, New Jersey.
I came across Clara by chance, a consequence of a
photograph bravely posted in Zhovkva’s tiny museum, a
couple of gloomy rooms on the ground floor of a wing of
Stanisław Żółkiewski’s crumbling castle. On the museum
wall hung a few dismal black-and-white photographs, small
and indistinct, three or four grainy, unfocused images taken
in the early days of the German occupation, the summer of
1941. They showed armored vehicles, grinning soldiers, the
seventeenth-century synagogue on fire. There was also a
picture of one of the entrances to the town through which I
walked, the Brama Glińska (Glinske Gate), taken shortly
after the Germans arrived.
Credit 18.1
Glinske Tor, Żółkiew, July 1941
At the top of the imposing stone gate three banners were
hung, offering a local message of welcome to the new
arrivals, in Ukrainian. HEIL HITLER! Glory to Petliura!
Glory to Bandera! Long live the Independent United
Ukrainian State! Long live the Leader Stepan Bandera!
It required courage for a museum curator to display such
photographs, evidence of local Ukrainian support for the
Germans. Eventually, I located her, Lyudmyla Baybula, a
municipal employee who worked in another wing of the
castle. Luda, as she asked me to call her, was in her forties,
a strong, attractive woman with jet-black hair, a proud,
open face, and truly amazing blue eyes. She had devoted
her life to learning about her town’s lost wartime years,
having grown up in a place without Jews, a subject of
silence. One of the few Jews to remain was a friend of her
grandmother’s, an elderly lady whose stories of childhood
ignited Luda’s interest in what had been lost.
Luda began to collect information and then decided to
display some of what she found on a wall of the museum.
During one of our conversations, over a lunch of pickles
and borscht, she inquired if I’d read Clara’s War, a book
about a young girl from Żółkiew who survived the German
occupation. She told me that Clara Kramer was one of
eighteen Jews who spent two years hidden under the
floorboards of a house occupied by a Polish couple, Mr. and
Mrs. Valentin Beck, and their daughter. In July 1944, when
the Russians arrived from the east, she was liberated.
I bought Clara’s book and read it in a single sitting.
Curiously, one of the eighteen was a young man called
Gedalo Lauterpacht, who turned out to be a distant relative
of Hersch’s. I visited Clara in New Jersey, wanting to learn
more, and found an engaging, sprightly, and talkative
ninety-two-year-old. She was fit and beaming, with a good
memory, but sad because her husband had died a few
weeks earlier.
“Żółkiew was nice in the 1930s,” she recalled, with its
fine city hall with a tall tower and the balcony on the top,
around all four sides. “Every day at noon a policeman
played Chopin on a trumpet,” she said with a smile. “He
walked round all four sides of the balcony and just played
his trumpet, always Chopin.” She hummed the piece but
couldn’t recollect the name.
As a child, Clara walked to school, past the Lemberg Gate
and the municipal theater. She took day trips to Lwów.
“There was a train about three times a day, but nobody
used it,” she explained; “the bus was every hour on the
hour, so we always used that.” There was no real tension
among the different communities. “We were Jewish, the
Poles were Polish, and the Ukrainians knew they were
Ukrainian. Everybody was observant, religious.” She had
Polish and Ukrainian friends, and at Christmas her family
visited Polish homes to admire the decorated trees. The
summer brought trips to other parts of Poland, places with
beautiful forests that were different from Galicia. There,
she remembered, the Jews were less free to trade or travel.
That was the first time she was called names.
She spoke fondly of the old wooden church on east–west
street: “It was next to where we lived.” One of her
neighbors was an old Lauterpacht, Hersch’s uncle David, it
turned out, who greeted them each morning on the street.
She recalled the name Flaschner and Leon’s uncle Leibus,
but not his face. Did he run an inn? she inquired. She knew
the street where the Flaschners lived with their children,
then called Piłsudski Street, located between her house and
the main square.
The Germans arrived but left abruptly, just as Olga
described. “It was a relief to get the Soviets; we were so
scared of the Germans.” They’d heard about the Anschluss
on the radio and from a few Viennese refugees who arrived
in 1938. A Viennese couple was assigned to them, the
Rosenbergs, a doctor and his wife. They came for supper
every Wednesday evening. Initially, Clara and her parents
didn’t believe their tales of life in Vienna.
When the Germans returned in June 1941, life became
more difficult. School friends ignored her on the street,
turning their heads as she approached. “I wore the white
armband,” she explained. A year later, they went into
hiding under the Becks’ floorboards, opposite the old
wooden church. Eighteen of them, including Gedalo
Lauterpacht and Mr. and Mrs. Melman, also relatives of
Hersch Lauterpacht’s.
She vividly remembered a day in March 1943, awoken by
footsteps outside the house, the sound of crying and
wailing. “We knew our day would come in Żółkiew. It was
maybe three o’clock in the morning. I was woken by the
noise and then some shots. They were being taken to the
forest; it was the only place to dig a grave.” She knew that
forest, the borek, where children played. “It was a beautiful
wood. We had fun there. Now there was not a thing we
could do. We could join them from our hiding place. At least
three or four times, we were sure this was the end. I knew
this was it.”
That was March 25. The Jews of Żółkiew, thirty-five
hundred of them, were marched into the wood, to a
clearing and the sandpits. They were lined up, two
kilometers from the center of their little town, then shot.
19
LEON KNEW NOTHING of the events in Żółkiew, Lemberg, and
Vienna. Rita had been with him in Paris for a year, but their
situation was precarious as they took steps to avoid regular
roundups of Jews, the rafles. A year earlier, in July 1942,
thirteen thousand Parisian Jews were interned at the
Vélodrome d’Hiver, then deported to Auschwitz.
That summer, Leon and Rita obtained official documents.
Two tiny identity cards were issued on July 6, 1943, in
Courrières, a small town in northwest France, the site of
Europe’s worst mining disaster forty years earlier. The
cards were in Leon’s papers, each with a diminutive
photograph and two sets of fingerprints, one for each hand.
Leon’s card was No. 433, citing his birthplace as Lemberg,
in the département of “Autriche”; Rita had card No. 434,
her maiden name misstated as Kamper (not Landes as it
should have been), with an obviously false signature. Both
cards stated their nationality to be French (untrue) and
misspelled their surnames as Bucholz (omitting an h).
Leon and Rita’s identity cards, 1943
The cards folded to close, thin blue card, and cheap.
When I contacted the mairie in Courrières, I was told that
the SS destroyed the town hall on the rue Jean Jaurès in
May 1940 and executed dozens of local residents who
resisted the German advance. Monsieur Louis Bétrémieux,
a local historian, told me the cards could not be genuine;
they were almost certainly forgeries; because the town was
a center of the French Resistance, many forged cards were
being issued. Thus did I connect Leon to an underground
life.
20
I DISCOVERED LITTLE about Leon’s life in the difficult period
before the liberation of Paris by American troops in August
1944. Leon’s teaching career was over, and he worked in
some capacity for a Jewish organization. There was nothing
about this in the papers my mother kept, but when I asked
my aunt Annie (the widow of Leon and Rita’s son JeanPierre, born after the war) whether Leon ever mentioned
this period, she produced a bundle of documents that Leon
gave her before he died. They were in a plastic shopping
bag.
The documents were unexpected. The bulk of the papers
comprised copies of a roughly printed newsletter, the
Bulletin of the Union Générale des Israélites de France
(UGIF), the Union of French Jews. The organization was
established during the Nazi occupation to provide
assistance to Jewish communities, and the Bulletin was
published each Friday. Leon had a near-complete
collection, from issue 1 (published in January 1942) to issue
119 (May 1944). Never more than four pages long, the
Bulletin was printed on cheap paper, with articles on Jewish
themes,
advertisements
(restaurants
in
the
4th
arrondissement, a funeral parlor), and death notices. As the
number of deportations rose, the Bulletin provided details
of letters that couldn’t be delivered, the addressees having
been sent to distant “work camps” in the east.
The Bulletin offered a platform for Nazi regulations, with
warnings about the dangers of noncompliance, a snapshot
of life in occupied Paris. One early ordinance prohibited
Jews from leaving their homes between 8:00 p.m. and 6:00
a.m. (February 1942). A month later, a new rule banned the
employment of Jews. From May 1942, every Jew was
required to wear a Star of David on the left side of the
chest (to be obtained from the main UGIF office at 19 rue
de Téhéran, the elegant nineteenth-century building where
Leon worked). In July, Jews were banned from attending
theaters or other places of public performance. From
October, they were limited to making purchases for an hour
each day, prohibited from having a telephone, then
required to travel in the last carriage of each train on the
metro. The following year, in August 1943, special identity
cards were issued.
As the number of deportations increased, the UGIF was
subjected to increased restrictions, particularly after its
leadership refused to give effect to an order to fire its
foreign Jewish employees. In February 1943, the local
Gestapo commander Klaus Barbie led a raid on the main
office, arresting more than eighty employees and
beneficiaries. A month later, on March 17 and 18, former
employees of UGIF were arrested (I noticed that issue 61 of
the Bulletin, published that week, was missing from Leon’s
collection). Later that summer, Alois Brunner ordered the
arrest of several UGIF leaders, sent to Drancy, then
Auschwitz.
As a Polish Jew, Leon was under particular threat, yet
somehow he evaded arrest. My aunt recalled him telling
her how, on one occasion in the summer of 1943, Brunner
personally descended on the offices at 19 rue de Téhéran to
oversee arrests. Leon avoided him by hiding behind a door.
The plastic bag offered other evidence of activity. It held
sheets of unused notepaper from the American Jewish Joint
Distribution Committee, the Mouvement National des
Prisonniers de Guerre et Déportés, and the Comité d’Unité
et de Défense des Juifs de France. Each of these
organizations, with which he must have worked, had offices
at 19 rue de Téhéran.
Among the papers were two personal statements, each
offering a detailed description of the treatment of
deportees sent east. One was prepared in Paris in April
1944, recording testimony that at Auschwitz “they hang for
no reason, to the sound of music.” The other was prepared
shortly after the war ended. “At Birkenau, we worked in
filth, at Auschwitz we died in cleanliness and order.” It
ended with a statement of evidence: “In short, this young
man confirms all that is said on the radio and in the
newspapers on the subject of concentration camps.”
Leon kept receipts of the postal packages he sent to
camps and ghettos in the General Government in Nazioccupied Poland. In the summer of 1942, he made twentyfour trips to the post office on the boulevard Malesherbes
to send packages to Lina Marx, a woman in the Piaski
ghetto, near Lublin (the ghetto was liquidated the following
summer, and Lina Marx was not among the few to survive).
Two postcards caught my eye, sent from the small town
of Sandomierz, in Nazi-occupied Poland, by a Dr. Ernst
Walter Ulmann, deported from Vienna in February 1941. In
the first, sent in March 1942, Dr. Ulmann explained that he
was an elderly, retired Viennese lawyer. “Please help me.”
The second card came four months later, in July, personally
addressed to Leon at 19 rue de Téhéran. Dr. Ulmann
thanked him for a care package of sausage, canned
tomatoes, and small quantities of sugar. By the time Leon
received the card, courteous Dr. Ulmann was dead: the
ghetto from which the card was sent had been emptied that
month, its occupants dispatched to the concentration camp
at Belzec, farther along the railway line that connected
Lemberg to Żółkiew.
At the bottom of the bag, I found a bundle of yellow cloth,
small sections cut into squares, with fraying edges. Each
had a black Star of David printed onto it, with the word
“Juif” at its center. There were forty-three of these stars,
each in pristine condition, unused, ready to be distributed
and worn.
21
LEON AND RITA WERE separated from their daughter during
their first years in Paris, although it seems they
occasionally spent a little time with her. A few photographs
remained—tiny square images, black and white, no more
than two dozen. Undated, they showed a little girl with her
parents, a toddler, two or three years old. She wore a white
bow in her hair as Rita hovered near her with an anxious
face. One image showed my mother standing with an older
boy. In another, she was with her smartly attired parents,
sitting at a café in a park, along with an older couple, the
woman crowned with a boxlike hat. A third set showed
Ruth with her mother in Paris, five or six years old, perhaps
toward the end of the occupation.
In none of the photographs did Rita smile.
Leon and Rita now lived on the rue Brongniart, the
shortest street in Paris, close to their friends Monsieur and
Madame Boussard, who were not Jewish and kept an eye
on them. In later years, Leon told his daughter that
Monsieur Boussard would warn him of roundups, telling
him to stay off the streets and away from the apartment.
Yet there was nothing about the Boussards in Leon’s papers
or any mention of them elsewhere. Leon and Rita remained
close to the Boussards after the war, but my mother lost
contact after they declined to attend her wedding to an
Englishman, my father. The English were an even more
detestable lot than the Germans, they explained. That was
in 1956. I laughed out loud when my mother told me the
story, but she said it was no laughing matter, that it put a
strain on the friendship between the older couples, and
that she never saw Monsieur Boussard again. Many years
later, when she took tea with Madame Boussard at La
Coupole, the famous café on the boulevard du
Montparnasse, Madame Boussard told her that Rita had
always loved her son, Jean-Pierre, more than her daughter.
My mother never saw her again.
On August 25, 1944, Leon and Rita celebrated the
liberation of Paris with the Boussards. They joined the
throngs on the Champs-Élysées, greeted American troops,
and wondered how they might collect their daughter from
Meudon. Leon stopped a U.S. Army truck filled with young
GIs, one of whom spoke Polish.
“Hop in,” the GI said, “we’ll take you to Meudon.” An
hour later, the soldiers dropped the couple in the town
center. One more “Good luck” in Polish, then they were off.
That night the family slept together in their home at 2
rue Brongniart, a tiny two-room apartment on the fourth
floor. It was the first time in five years that they had slept
under the same roof.
22
I RETURNED TO a photograph in Leon’s papers, one I first saw
in my mother’s living room before I first traveled to Lviv.
I sent the image to an archivist at the Fondation Charles
de Gaulle in Paris. She told me it was taken on November
1, 1944, in the cemetery of Ivry-sur-Seine, just outside
Paris. De Gaulle had visited the Carré des Fusillés, a
memorial to foreign resistance fighters executed by the
Germans during the occupation.
“The person with the mustache is Adrien Tixier,
appointed by General de Gaulle as minister of the interior
in the provisional government of the French Republic in
September 1944,” the archivist explained. “Behind him is
the head of the police in Paris, [Charles] Luizet” (on the left
of the picture, in peak cap), and the prefect of the Seine,
Marcel Flouret (on the right, white scarf). “Behind Flouret
with the mustache is Gaston Palewski,” a name that rang a
bell: Palewski was director of de Gaulle’s cabinet, Nancy
Mitford’s lover, later immortalized as Fabrice, the fictional
duc de Sauveterre in the novel Love in a Cold Climate.
Charles de Gaulle, Cimetière d’Ivry, 1944
What was Leon doing in such company?
One clue came with the identity of those interred at the
Carré des Fusillés. Among those executed were twentythree French resistants, members of the Franc-Tireurs et
Partisans de la Main d’Œuvre Immigrée, foreign fighters
living in Paris. The group included eight Poles, five Italians,
three Hungarians, a Spaniard, three French, and two
Armenians, one of whom was Missak Manouchian, the
leader of the group. The only woman was Romanian. Half
the group was Jewish.
The twenty-three members of the Resistance were
apprehended in November 1943. Three months later, bright
red posters appeared around the city and other parts of
France, with names and faces under a bold headline,
“L’armée du crime” (The army of crime). This was L’affiche
rouge, the famous red poster that called on Parisians to
hunt out these foreigners before they destroyed France, its
women and children. “It is always foreigners who take
command of such actions, always the unemployed and
professional criminals who execute them, and always the
Jews who inspire them,” the back of the poster declared.
A few weeks later, in February, all but one of the group
were executed by firing squad at Fort Mont-Valérien. The
solitary exception was Olga Bancic, the only woman in the
group, briefly spared. She was beheaded in Stuttgart a few
weeks later, on her thirty-second birthday. The rest were
buried at the Ivry cemetery, and de Gaulle visited their
graves, accompanied by Leon.
The executions were memorialized by Louis Aragon’s
poem “L’affiche rouge.” Written in 1955, the poem drew on
Manouchian’s last letter to his wife, Mélinée, lines that
later inspired the singer Léo Ferré, who wrote a song that
was familiar from childhood, perhaps because Leon knew
it:
Happiness to all, Happiness to those who will survive,
I die without hatred for the German people,
Adieu to pain and unhappiness
When de Gaulle visited the graves, Leon was among the
entourage. Did he know the twenty-three? One person on
the poster was familiar, Maurice Fingercwajg, a Polish Jew,
who was twenty when executed. I recognized the name:
Lucette, a childhood friend of my mother’s, walked her to
school each morning, after the occupation was over, and
later married Lucien Fingercweig, a cousin of the executed
young man. Lucette’s husband later told me that Leon had
been in touch with the group, but he was unable to offer
more detail. “That was why he was near the front of the
procession at the Ivry cemetery,” Lucien added.
23
WHEN THE OCCUPATION of Paris ended, Leon had no
information as to the fate of Malke, Gusta, or Laura, or any
of the family in Lemberg and Żółkiew. Newspaper articles
reported mass killings at concentration camps, and names
of towns like Treblinka and Auschwitz began to appear in
the press. Leon must have feared the worst but hoped for
something better.
New organizations sprang up. In March 1945, the
American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee set up the
Comité Juif d’Action Sociale et de Reconstruction (the
Jewish
Committee
for
Social
Assistance
and
Reconstruction). Leon was working with the Comité Juif in
the center of Paris at the Hôtel de Lutèce, which had been
a Gestapo headquarters, when he heard the news of
Hitler’s suicide on April 30. A week later, General Alfred
Jodl signed an unconditional surrender. In July, Leon was
appointed chef de service, although which department he
headed was not clear from the one document he retained in
his papers, a fading gray identity card. He never spoke to
me of this organization, said to have grown out of the
French Resistance, which worked to reintegrate refugees
and concentration camp survivors into postwar life. My
mother’s recollection of those days was limited to the
memory of an occasional visitor to their home on the rue
Brongniart, a destitute man or woman invited to share a
meal and conversation. More than one committed suicide.
Leon did receive one piece of encouraging news.
Separated from his friend Max for six years, in April he
found an address in New York, to which he wrote. In July, a
response arrived, joyful about the renewal of contact,
tinged with fear about the fate of lost family members. “As
long as I don’t have any bad news,” Max wrote to Leon, “I
will not lose hope.” What news of your family? Max
inquired. He listed those for whom he sought information,
including his missing brothers. The letter ended with
affectionate sentiments, encouragement that Leon and Rita
should move to America, and an offer of help with visas. In
January 1946, Leon and Rita registered at the American
consulate in Paris to apply for emigration, Rita as an
Austrian, Leon as a Pole.
24
AROUND THIS TIME, Le Monde and other newspapers reported
that the Allies were thinking of creating an international
tribunal to prosecute the leading Nazis. Speculation
hardened into fact: the tribunal would have eight judges,
two of whom were French. Leon might have known one, by
name at least: Robert Falco, a former judge at the court of
appeal in Paris.
In October 1945, the indictment of the twenty-two
defendants was put before the tribunal. Le Monde
described the crimes with which they would be charged,
noting a new one called “genocide.” What did the crime
signify, the newspaper inquired, and what were its origins?
The answer came in an interview with the man who was
said to have invented the word, Rafael Lemkin, identified as
an American professor. Asked about the practical
consequences, Lemkin referred the journalist to events
occurring in places with which Leon was so closely
connected, Vienna and Poland. “If in the future a State acts
in a manner that is intended to destroy a national or racial
minority within the population,” Lemkin told French
readers, “any perpetrator can be arrested if he leaves the
country.”
The reference to events in Vienna and Poland would have
offered Leon another reminder of a family about which he
had no news. His father, Pinkas, and his brother, Emil, were
both dead by the end of 1914, but what of those who
remained in Vienna, Lemberg, and Żółkiew?
In 1945, Leon had no information, but I now did. He
never told me that every single person from his childhood,
each and every member of the extended Galician family of
Buchholzes and Flaschners, was murdered. Of the seventy
or more family members living in Lemberg and Żółkiew
when the war began, the only survivor was Leon, the
smiling boy with big ears.
Leon never spoke to me of that period, nor did he
mention any of these family members. Only now, as a
consequence of accepting the invitation to deliver a lecture
in Lviv, could I begin to comprehend the scale of the
devastation that he lived with for the remainder of a life
that ran to the end of the twentieth century. The man I
came to know in the second half of his life was the last
person standing from the years in Galicia. This was the
cause of the silence I had heard as a child, a silence that
dominated the small apartment he shared with Rita.
From the few documents and photographs, I was able to
reconstruct the outlines of a disappeared world. The gaps
were many, and not just of individuals. I noticed the
absence of affectionate exchanges between Leon and Rita
in his papers. To her “golden child” Rita sent heartfelt love,
but if a similar sentiment was communicated to Leon, no
written trace remained. The same went the other way.
I had a sense that something else had intervened in their
lives before they separated in January 1939. Why did Leon
leave Vienna on his own? How did his infant daughter get
to Paris? Why did Rita stay behind? I returned to the
documents, seeking clues in the scrap of paper with Miss
Tilney’s address and the three photographs of the man in a
bow tie.
They led nowhere, so I turned to another place connected
with his early life, the small town of Żółkiew. This was the
birthplace of Leon’s mother, Malke, and also of Hersch
Lauterpacht, the man who put the words “crimes against
humanity” into the Nuremberg trial.
PART II
Lauterpacht
The individual human being…is the ultimate unit
of all law.
—HERSCH LAUTERPACHT, 1943
Credit p2.1
25
ON A WARM SUMMER’S DAY in 1945, a few weeks after the war
in Europe had ended, a middle-aged law professor who was
born in Żółkiew but now lived in Cambridge, England,
awaited the arrival of lunch guests. I imagined him in his
study on the upper floor of a solid, semidetached house on
Cranmer Road, sitting at his large mahogany desk, gazing
out of the window, Bach’s St. Matthew Passion playing on
the gramophone. Forty-eight years old and anxious, Hersch
Lauterpacht awaited the arrival of the U.S. Supreme Court
justice Robert Jackson, recently appointed by President
Truman as chief prosecutor of German war criminals at the
International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg.
Jackson was on his way to Cambridge with a specific
problem, one for which he sought Lauterpacht’s “good
judgment and learning.” Specifically, he needed to
persuade the Soviets and the French on the charges to be
brought
against
the
Nuremberg
defendants
for
international crimes perpetrated by the German Nazi
leadership. The relationship between Jackson and
Lauterpacht was one of trust, going back several years.
They would discuss the list of crimes, the roles of the
prosecutors and the judges, the treatment of evidence,
points of language.
The one matter they would not talk about was
Lauterpacht’s family: like Leon and millions of others, he
awaited news about his parents and siblings, uncles and
aunts, cousins and nephews, a large family lost in silence,
in Lemberg and Żółkiew.
Of this he did not wish to speak to Robert Jackson.
26
LAUTERPACHT WAS BORN in Żółkiew on August 16, 1897. A
birth certificate, unearthed in an archive in Warsaw,
declared that his parents were Aron Lauterpacht, a
businessman, and Deborah Turkenkopf. The birth was
witnessed by Barich Orlander, an innkeeper who happened
to be a distant relation of Leon’s mother.
Aron worked in the oil business and managed a sawmill.
Deborah attended to the family, Hersch’s older brother,
David (Dunek), and a younger sister, Sabina (Sabka), born
three years after Hersch. A fourth child had been stillborn.
Lauterpacht’s family was large, middle-class, literate, and
devoutly Jewish (Deborah maintained a kosher home and
modest appearance, following the tradition of wearing a
wig). A photograph of the family showed Lauterpacht aged
five, his feet pointing in different directions, holding on to
the arm of a father with a solid appearance.
Lauterpacht’s sister, the little girl perched on the stool,
would eventually produce a daughter of her own called
Inka. When I met Inka, she described Aron and Deborah as
“wonderful” grandparents, “kind and loving” people who
were hardworking, generous, and “very ambitious” for
their children. Inka recalled a lively home, filled with music
and books, talk of ideas and politics, an optimistic future.
The family spoke Yiddish, but the parents switched to
Polish if they didn’t want the children to understand.
Credit 26.1
Lauterpacht family, Żółkiew, 1902; Hersch is far left
The cadastral records of Żółkiew disclosed that the
Lauterpacht family lived at house No. 158 on parcel 488.
This turned out to be the eastern end of the same east–west
street on which my great-grandmother Malke Buchholz
(Flaschner) had lived, the other end of town.
Lyudmyla, Żółkiew’s fine and friendly historian, identified
the precise spot, now covered in tarmac on the eastern
edge of the town, on the road by which I’d arrived from
Lviv.
“A fine place to put a statue,” Lyudmyla observed wryly,
and we agreed it would happen one day. The spot was close
to the Alte Friedhof (the old cemetery) and the old wooden
church of the Holy Trinity, to which Lyudmyla took me.
With its worn brown-shingle exterior, the church interior
was infused with cozy smells of wood and spice. There was
a striking altar of painted icons; it was a warm place of
gold embellishments, with deep reds and blues, a place of
safety, unchanged in a hundred years. Lauterpacht’s uncle
David lived right opposite, Lyudmyla added, a house long
gone. Nearby she pointed out another house, which we
should visit. She knocked vigorously on the front door,
eventually opened by the owner, a round and jolly man with
a big smile. Come in, he said, before leading us to the front
bedroom, overlooking the wooden church, then to a small
area between bed and wall. On his knees, he pried up a
section of the parquet, revealing an irregular hole in the
floor, just large enough for an adult to pass. In this space,
in the darkness, Clara Kramer and seventeen other Jews
hid for nearly two years. Among them were various
members of the Lauterpacht family, not more than a stone’s
throw from where Lauterpacht was born.
27
LAUTERPACHT LEFT Żółkiew in 1910, with his parents and
siblings. He was thirteen, off to Lemberg for a better
education, in the sixty-second year of the emperor Franz
Joseph’s liberal reign. That year, the Epsom Derby was won
by a horse called Lemberg, owned by an English bachelor
called Alfie Cox with no obvious connection to the city.
As Aron managed a sawmill on the outskirts of the city,
his son enrolled at the Humanist Gymnasium, already a
distinct and articulate boy. He was a voracious reader,
confident, politically engaged, and disinclined to follow a
religious path. His peers recognized him as a leader, a boy
who was cultured, strong-willed, intolerant, with both “a
very big intellect” and a conscience. Social inequalities
coursed through Lemberg’s streets, built on foundations of
xenophobia, racism, and group identity and conflict. These
elements touched him from an early age.
In Żółkiew, Lauterpacht had learned about friction
between groups, divisions carved into everyday life by
matters of religious faith and political belief. Lemberg
offered a more bloody account, a city built on the fault line
of nationalist and imperialist ambitions, as Leon too had
learned. Yet even as an Orthodox Jewish family tucked
between
Roman
Catholic
and
Eastern
Orthodox
civilizations, the Lauterpachts believed themselves to be
living in a metropolis that was the epicenter of liberal
civilization, a firmament of inventive mathematicians and
fearless lawyers, of cafés filled with scientists, of poets and
musicians, a city with a fine new railway station and a
magnificent opera house, a place that Buffalo Bill Cody
might visit (as he did in 1905, with his Wild West show).
It was also a city of sounds and smells. “I can hear the
bells of Lwów ringing, each one rings differently,” wrote
Józef Wittlin. “I can hear the splash of the fountains on the
Market Square, and the soughing of the fragrant trees,
which the spring rain has washed clean of dust.” Young
Lauterpacht could have frequented the same cafés as
Wittlin, all now long gone: the Europejska at the corner of
Jagiellońska and May the Third Streets (where “the
appearance of a member of the fairer sex was a disturbing
rarity”), the Sztuka on an upper floor of Andriolli Passage
(“where the atmospheric lighting was dimmed whenever
the long-haired violinist Wasserman played Schumann’s
Träumerei”), and the Renaissance on May the Third and
Kościuszko Streets (where waiters from other cafés would
appear in challengingly bright jackets and colorful ties and
order their colleagues to wait on them).
War came to Lemberg three years after the family’s
arrival. Lauterpacht was in the city when the Russians
occupied it in September 1914, emperor Nicholas receiving
the news that the Austrians had been totally routed and
were “retreating in complete disorder.” This was a
reference to the great battle in which Leon’s older brother,
Emil, was probably killed. The New York Times reported
that the Russian “invaders” showed “kindness,” respected
churches and “little wayside praying centres,” allowing
Lemberg to remain as peaceful and busy as London amid
the bloody mayhem of war.
In June 1915, the Austro-Hungarian army retook the city,
with help from German troops, producing “an outburst of
wild joy throughout Austria and Germany.” A month later,
Lauterpacht was conscripted into the Austrian army,
although he seems to have spent most of his time billeted
at his father’s sawmill. A friend observed him there in the
engine room, “oblivious” to the sounds of machinery and
war, immersed in books, teaching himself French and
English. Lauterpacht kept a detailed notebook, now in the
possession of his son, in which he recorded the books he
read, across a wide range of areas, including war and
economics, religion and psychology, Adam Smith’s Wealth
of Nations and a treatise on Marxism. Music offered an
escape, in particular the Bach and Beethoven that would
come to offer passion and solace over a lifetime. He was
said to have a “phenomenally good ear and musical
memory,” but his playing didn’t extend beyond a twofingered Kreutzer Sonata.
As the time came for him to decide on a life at the
university, his parents persuaded him to follow in his
brother’s footsteps. In the autumn of 1915, he enrolled at
the law faculty of Lemberg University.
28
THE WRITINGS ON Lauterpacht’s life had little to say about his
university days, what he studied or where he lived, so I
decided to explore the city archives of Lviv. Without Polish
or Ukrainian language skills, I came to rely on Ihor and
Ivan, admirable students at the same law faculty where
Lauterpacht had studied a century earlier (Ivan’s Ph.D., on
the Soviet naval base at Sebastopol in the Crimea, proved
to be timely, coinciding with the renewal of Russia’s
territorial forays, this time into the unlawful occupation of
the Crimea). Ivan eventually took me on a trail that led to
the meandering edifice that was the State Archive of Lviv
Oblast.
Muzeina Square, just north of the town hall, was familiar
to me, the home to a flea market, an open-air library of
postcards, newspapers, and books that offered a full
account of the city’s anguished twentieth century. My son
bought a Soviet cuckoo clock (blue and red, metal) as I
forayed for scraps from the Austro-Hungarian period,
Polish postcards, a few Jewish and Yiddish objects. The
premium objects—if price was the measure—were from the
three years of Nazi control: I spotted the distinctive shape
of a dark green Stahlhelm with a swastika on one side and
an SS symbol on the other, but the seller shooed me away
when I got too close.
Lemberg, 1917. Law faculty on left, second
from top; railway station on right, second from
top; George Hotel, bottom right.
The State Archive occupied a dilapidated eighteenthcentury building abutting a former Dominican monastery,
part of the Baroque Church of the Blessed Eucharist. In the
Soviet era, the church served as a museum of religion and
atheism; now it was a Ukrainian Greek Catholic church. A
scarfed babushka guarded the entrance. “Your business?”
she shouted. Ivan mouthed the password—“Archiv”—with
sufficient authority that we were allowed to enter. The
secret was to carry on walking, not to stop.
The reading room was reached through an overgrown
rose garden and up a metal staircase over which a rainsodden carpet had been laid. Ivan and I entered on the first
floor, a place with no signs, the corridor unlit, a hallway
lined with the detritus of Lembergiana. Documents lined
the walls: the final retreat of the Austro-Hungarian army,
November 1918; the proclamation of the independent but
short-lived West Ukrainian People’s Republic, same date;
the German encirclement of Soviet Lviv, June 1941;
Governor Hans Frank’s order incorporating Galicia into the
territory of his General Government, August 1941; another
order, closing all Lemberg’s schools and universities,
September 1941.
At the end of the corridor, a neon light flickered above
the entrance to the reading room. Here the archivist took
our book orders, in the presence of five readers, including
one nun and two sleepers. All was quiet until the electricity
died, a short, daily occurrence that prompted a gentle
commotion, although on one occasion I noticed that the
nun managed to sleep through the entire disturbance.
Return tomorrow at ten, the archivist instructed, to collect
the books. The next day, a pile of volumes awaited, neatly
laid out on wooden desks, three towers of dust, leather, and
crumbling paper. These were the student records of the law
faculty from 1915 to 1919.
We began in the autumn of 1915, working our way
through hundreds of forms filled in by hand, the pages
arranged alphabetically by the name of each student,
identified as a Pole or Mosaic (Jewish), with only a few
Ukrainians. It was painstaking work. Names were written
out, with lists of the courses taken, class hours, the names
of the professors. The back of each form was signed and
dated.
Ivan spotted a first Lauterpacht document, based on the
work of his friend Ihor, which dated to the autumn of 1915,
shortly after the Russians had been removed. We gathered
a near-complete set, seven semesters of study from 1915 to
1919, Lauterpacht’s formative years. There was a home
address, 6 Rutowskiego Street, now Teatralna Street, just a
few doors from my hotel. I’d walked past it, even noticed
the fine metal doors with their two large Ls at the center,
mounted in circular metal frames. Lauterpacht? Lemberg?
Lwów?
I learned that Lauterpacht’s studies began with Roman
law and German public law, followed by one course on soul
and body, and another on optimism and pessimism. Of the
early teachers, only one had a familiar name, Professor
Oswald Balzer, teacher of the legal histories of Poland and
Austria, distinct subjects. Balzer was a practicing advocate
who argued esoteric cases for the governments of Austria
and Galicia. The most notable, which I’d come across in my
own work on boundary disputes, was a nineteenth-century
conflict over the ownership of two lakes in the Tatra
Mountains. Balzer was a practical man, an influence on
Lauterpacht.
The second year of studies, from September 1916, was
dominated by war and the death of the emperor Franz
Joseph, after a record-inducing reign over sixty-eight years.
Change was in the air as battles continued to rage around
the city, yet classes continued. I was struck by the seam of
religious themes (Catholic Christian law, then the History
and Culture of Israel) and by the daily lecture on
pragmatism and instinctivism, the two poles between which
Lauterpacht’s intellectual development oscillated like a
sharp current of electricity. In April 1917, he passed a state
exam in historical and legal science, obtaining the highest
mark (“good”).
His third year began in September 1917 as Austria’s hold
on the city became more tenuous. Lauterpacht took a first
class on criminal law, taught by Professor Dr. Juliusz
Makarewicz, a well-known authority on Austrian criminal
law. A second followed, with the same teacher, on the
science of the prison. A third course, on Austrian adversary
proceedings, was taught by Professor Dr. Maurycy
Allerhand. I mention these names because they will return.
The fourth and final year of studies opened on the cusp of
dramatic changes, for Lemberg, Europe, and the world. In
November 1918, as World War I ended—along with the
Austro-Hungarian Empire—control of Lemberg changed as
each week passed.
29
LAUTERPACHT’S LIFE WAS transformed by a secret decision
taken by Archduke Wilhelm of Austria, the twenty-threeyear-old “Red Prince,” one that would catalyze a bloody
conflict between Poles and Ukrainians in Lemberg. This
was in November 1918, four years after Leon had left for
Vienna, when Wilhelm ordered Polish units of the AustroHungarian army to withdraw from Lemberg, replacing
them with two Ukrainian regiments of Sich Riflemen. On
November 1, the Ukrainians took control of Lviv and
declared it the capital of the West Ukrainian People’s
Republic, a new country.
Heavy fighting followed between Polish and Ukrainian
factions, with Jews caught between the two, fearful of
choosing the wrong side, the one that lost, opting for
neutrality. The conflict continued beyond the armistice
signed by Germany and the Allies on November 11, the day
Poland declared independence. Bloodshed came to
Teatralna Street, where the Lauterpachts lived, causing
much damage to property. Lauterpacht’s school friend
Joseph Roth (a namesake of the novelist born in nearby
Brody) described the period that followed, days of “friction
and
conflict”
as
the
Austro-Hungarian
Empire
disintegrated. “To protect the Jewish population,” Roth
explained, “a voluntary Jewish militia was organized.” It
included Lauterpacht, who patrolled the Jewish quarters
“day and night.”
Within a week, the Ukrainians had lost control to the
Poles, and an agreement was reached to end the fighting.
As Lviv became Lwów, looting and killing came to the
streets.
I found a picture of a barricade, on the street where the
Lauterpacht family would later live, dusted with a light fall
of early snow. With this photograph, it was easier to
imagine the events over those three days, described by The
New York Times under the headline: “1,100 Jews Murdered
in Lemberg Pogroms.” The words heaped pressure on
President Woodrow Wilson to stop the bloodshed.
Credit 29.1
Barricade on Sykstuska Street, Lemberg, November 1918
Lauterpacht plowed on with his studies as these bloody
events underscored the dangers for minority groups.
Confronted by the harsh realities for tens of thousands of
individuals caught up in a struggle between groups, and
now a leader of the Organization of Zionist Academics in
Galicia, he established a Jewish high school (gymnasium)
and organized a boycott of Polish schools. Jewish youths
could not “sit on the same benches with those who
participated in the pogroms against Jews,” a friend of his
explained.
The collapse of established authority unleashed a violent
nationalism as the possibility of a new Polish or Ukrainian
state came into view. Among the Jewish population, there
were differing reactions. As the antinationalist community
of Orthodox Jews hoped for a quiet life alongside the Poles
and the Ukrainians, some argued for the creation of an
independent Jewish state somewhere in the former AustroHungarian Empire. Others wanted greater autonomy for
Jews in newly independent Poland, whereas for the Zionists
nothing less than a separate Jewish state in Palestine would
suffice.
Such issues of group identity and autonomy, along with
the rise of nationalism and the emergence of new states
after the end of World War I, combined to move the law to
the center of the political stage. This was a new
development in scale and scope. How might the law protect
minorities? it was asked. What languages could they speak?
Would they be able to educate their children in special
schools? Such questions continue to resonate today around
the world, but back then no international rules offered
guidance on how to address them. Each country, old or
new, was free to treat those who lived within its borders as
it wished. International law offered few constraints on the
majority’s treatment of minorities and no rights for
individuals.
Lauterpacht’s intellectual development coincided with
this crucial moment. Engaged in Zionist activity, he
nevertheless feared nationalism. The philosopher Martin
Buber, who lectured and lived in Lemberg, became an
intellectual influence, opposing Zionism as a form of
abhorrent nationalism and holding to the view that a Jewish
state in Palestine would inevitably oppress the Arab
inhabitants. Lauterpacht attended Buber’s lectures and
found himself attracted to such ideas, identifying himself as
a disciple of Buber’s. This was an early fluttering of
skepticism about the power of the state.
In the meantime, classes at law school continued.
Lauterpacht immersed himself in Professor Roman
Longchamps de Bérier’s course on Austrian private law,
even as Austria withered. Professor Makarewicz offered a
daily lecture on Austrian criminal law, even as that law
ceased to be applicable in Polish Lwów, giving the class a
surreal air. Lauterpacht also took a first course on
international law, taught in the autumn of 1918 by Dr. Józef
Buzek, politically active in Vienna and about to become a
member of the new Polish parliament. The classes must
have underscored the marginality of the subject, at a
university where discrimination was rife and individual
professors were free to decide that Ukrainians and Jews
were not permitted to attend their courses.
Lauterpacht imagined a move elsewhere, perhaps
inspired by one of the books he listed in his notebook as
having read. Ghetto Comedies, written by Israel Zangwill,
whose face would soon appear on the cover of Time
magazine, offered a collection of stories that touched on
the glories of “Anglicization.” In “The Model of Sorrows,”
Zangwill wrote the story of an innkeeper who left Russia
for England because of the “intolerable” situation at home.
Another story (“Holy Wedlock”) posed a question: “Would
you not like to go and see Vienna?”
30
IN 1919, Vienna was the capital of a rump state, the last
territory of a monarchy that had lasted nearly a thousand
years. It was a place of dilapidated buildings, filled with
demobilized soldiers and prisoners of war streaming home,
with galloping inflation and an Austrian Crown “dissolving
like jelly in your fingers.” Stefan Zweig described a
“distressing” foray into an Austrian city overwhelmed by
famine and the “yellow, dangerous eyes of the starving,” of
bread that was but a few “black crumbs tasting of pitch and
glue,” frozen potatoes, men going around in old uniforms
and trousers made of old sacks, and a “general breakdown
of morale.” Yet it still offered hope to Leon and his family,
who had been there for five years. To someone like
Lauterpacht, the lure of a liberal culture, literature, music,
and cafés, and of universities open to all, would have been
strong.
In the summer of 1919, after his course ended,
Lauterpacht left Lwów. Europe’s boundaries were being
redrawn and the issue of Lwów’s control became unclear:
in January 1918, the U.S. president, Woodrow Wilson, had
addressed Congress, setting out his Fourteen Points, ideas
on the “autonomous development” of “the peoples of
Austria-Hungary” that also took account of the aspiration
for a new state “inhabited by indisputably Polish
populations.” Wilson’s proposals had an unintended
consequence: the modern law of human rights was born on
the anvil of Lwów and its environs.
In April 1919, as the Versailles negotiations moved to a
close, an intergovernmental Commission on Polish Affairs
drew a line as Poland’s eastern boundary. It was known as
the Curzon Line, in honor of the British foreign secretary,
and Lauterpacht played a minor role in its preparation
(although he never wrote of this), working as an
interpreter. He knew the territory and had the language
skills. “Hersch, then aged 21, was chosen as interpreter
and fulfilled his task satisfactorily,” a friend reported. By
then, he spoke French, Polish, and Ukrainian, with
knowledge of Hebrew, Yiddish, German, and Italian. He
even had a little English. The Curzon Line was drawn to the
east of Lwów, bringing the city and surrounding areas,
including Żółkiew, into Poland. Russian control was
avoided.
These developments coincided with attacks on Jews
across Poland, raising concerns in the United States and
elsewhere as to the ability of a newly independent Poland
to safeguard its German and Jewish minorities. In the
shadow of Versailles, a quid pro quo emerged: Poland
would get independence if it protected the rights of
minorities. At the behest of President Wilson, the Harvard
historian Archibald Coolidge reported on conditions in
Lwów and Galicia, calling for minorities to be assured basic
protections, of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
President Wilson proposed a special treaty to link
Poland’s membership in the League of Nations with a
commitment to bestow equal treatment on racial and
national minorities. Wilson was supported by France, but
Britain objected, fearful that similar rights would then be
accorded to other groups, including “American negroes,
Southern Irish, Flemings and Catalans.” The new League of
Nations must not protect minorities in all countries, a
British official complained, or it would have “the right to
protect the Chinese in Liverpool, the Roman Catholics in
France, the French in Canada, quite apart from more
serious problems, such as the Irish.” Britain objected to any
depletion of sovereignty—the right to treat others as it
wished—or international oversight. It took this position
even if the price was more “injustice and oppression.”
This was the background against which pro-Zionist and
national Jewish delegations arrived in Paris in March 1919,
calling for greater autonomy, language and cultural rights,
and principles of self-government and representation. As
these matters were being debated, a report circulated that
350 kilometers to the northeast of Lwów, in the town of
Pinsk, a group of Polish soldiers had massacred thirty-five
Jewish civilians. This caused the pendulum to swing as the
Versailles negotiations produced a draft treaty for the
protection of minorities in Poland. On May 21, the Polish
delegation at Versailles was handed a copy of the draft
treaty, reflecting President Wilson’s call for “rigid
protection” for minorities. This was seen by the new Polish
government as an unwarranted interference in its internal
affairs. Ignacy Paderewski, the classical pianist and head of
the Polish delegation, wrote directly to the British prime
minister, David Lloyd George, to object to every clause of
the draft treaty. Don’t create a “Jewish problem,” he
warned, in Poland or elsewhere. Fearful that Warsaw might
not sign the treaty, Lloyd George agreed to concessions.
A month later, the Versailles Treaty was signed. Article 93
required Poland to sign a second treaty, to protect
“inhabitants” who differed from the majority of the
population in race, language, or religion. The Allies would
be entitled to “protect” these minorities, a further
humiliation in the eyes of Poland because lopsided
obligations were imposed: rights were given to some
groups, but not all, and the victorious powers would escape
equivalent obligations for their own minorities.
Poland was basically forced to sign the document, known
as the Little Treaty of Versailles. Article 4 imposed Polish
nationality on all people born in and around Lwów,
including Lauterpacht and Leon. Poland was required to
take steps to protect all its inhabitants, “without distinction
of birth, nationality, language, race or religion.” Minorities
could run their own schools and religious and social
institutions and would have language rights and religious
freedom. Yet the Polish Minorities Treaty went further: it
made the rights of such minorities into “obligations of
international concern,” to be protected at the League of
Nations. Any disputes could go to the Permanent Court of
International Justice, newly created in The Hague.
Such revolutionary obligations allowed some minorities in
Poland to have a right of access to international protection
but not the Polish majority. This produced a backlash, a
little treaty, a little time bomb, the unintended consequence
of well-intentioned international legislation. A few days
after signing the Minorities Treaty, President Wilson
established a commission to investigate the situation of the
Jews in Poland, supposedly at the request of President
Paderewski, to be headed by Henry Morgenthau, the
former U.S. ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. Marshal
Józef Piłsudski, head of the new Polish government,
complained bitterly about the Minorities Treaty. “Why not
trust to Poland’s honor?” he asked Morgenthau. “Every
faction within Poland was agreed on doing justice to the
Jew, and yet the Peace Conference, at the insistence of
America, insults us by telling us that we must do justice.”
The commission visited Lwów on August 30, 1919. The
members appreciated the “exceedingly pretty and modern
looking” city, largely undamaged by the events of the
previous November except for the Jewish quarter, which
was “burnt down.” The commission concluded that
although “excesses” had occurred, only sixty-four people
were killed, far fewer than the thousand reported in The
New York Times. It also found that those responsible were
soldiers, not civilians, so it would be “unfair to condemn
the Polish nation as a whole” for the violence of a few
troops or local mobs.
Shortly before leaving, the commission’s young legal
adviser, Arthur Goodhart, walked up Vysoky Zamok, the
large hill to the north that overlooked the city, in the
company of Dr. Fiedler, the president of Lwów Polytechnic.
Trouble was brewing, Dr. Fiedler told Goodhart, because of
the separate schools the Jews had asked for. Assimilate, or
face difficulties.
31
NEARLY A CENTURY LATER, I walked up the same path taken by
Fiedler and Goodhart to the top of the hill, to look across a
city that was, back in 1919, on the cusp of great changes.
“I was unable to take my final examinations,” Lauterpacht
complained, “because the University closed its doors to the
Jews of Eastern Galicia.” He followed the suggestion of the
writer Israel Zangwill and headed to Vienna.
I visited the home he left behind in Lwów, a gray fourstory neoclassical building on Teatralna Street, largely
unscathed today, now home to a “Cossack hostel.” A
photograph from that period showed the building framed
between two churches, the town hall’s impressive tower to
the rear. A plaque in the lobby recorded the name of the
architect (the engineer A. Piller, 1911), introducing a
mighty stairwell capped by a glass skylight. The first-floor
apartment had a balcony, allowing a fine view across the
city.
I imagined Lauterpacht leaving behind this view. He
would have made his way to the station, through the
vibrant scene described by the writer Karl Emil Franzos,
passing hussar officers alongside elegant gentlemen;
Moldovan boyars with “dark, cunning faces” and “heavy
gold rings”; dark-eyed women in “heavy silk clothing and
dirty slips”; long bearded Ruthenian priests; faded
coquettes on their way to Bucharest or Iasi to seek their
luck. He might also have encountered a few “civilized
travellers,” emancipated Polish Jews like Lauterpacht who
were heading west.
Lauterpacht arrived at the Nordwestbahnhof of Vienna,
the city dominated by Freud, Klimt, and Mahler. It was
passing through troubled economic times, the trauma of
empire’s end. Bustling with refugees from Galicia, inflation
and poverty rampant, this was Rotes Wien—Red Vienna—a
city with a Social Democratic mayor. The Russian
Revolution provoked agitation for some, hope for others.
Austria was on its knees, an empire dissolved. The country
now depended on the Czechs and the Poles for coal, on the
Banat for cereal. It had no access to the sea, having lost
most of its former territory, including the German-speaking
Sudetenland and south Tyrol, Hungary, Czechoslovakia,
and Poland, as well as the State of Slovenes, Croats, and
Serbs. Bukovina and Bosnia and Herzegovina were also
gone. Prohibited from entering a union with Germany, the
country wasn’t even allowed to call itself Deutschösterreich
(German Austria).
Feelings of subjugation and humiliation further inflamed
nationalist sentiment. The influx of Ostjuden from Galicia—
young men like Lauterpacht and Leon—made for easy
targets. Around the time of Lauterpacht’s arrival, five
thousand gathered at the city hall to call for all Jews to be
expelled from the city. Two years later, in March 1921, the
numbers had grown as forty thousand attended a rally of
the Antisemitenbund to applaud the call by the director of
the Burgtheater, Hofrat Milenkovich, for strict limits on
jobs for Jews.
The journalist Hugo Bettauer published a best-selling
novel, Die Stadt ohne Juden, which imagined the city
without Jews. “If I was able to get out of the burning
Lemberg ghetto and reach Vienna,” one of Bettauer’s
characters declared, “I guess I’ll find some place to go from
Vienna.” In the novel, the city falls apart without its Jews,
and in due course they are invited to return, their expulsion
recognized as a mistake. Bettauer paid a price for such
ideas: he was murdered in 1925 by Otto Rothstock, a young
National Socialist, who was tried but acquitted on grounds
of insanity (he later became a dentist). The nationalist
newspaper Wiener Morgenzeitung warned that Bettauer’s
murder sent a message to “every intellectual who wrote for
a cause.”
Such events colored Lauterpacht’s life in Vienna. He was
now enrolled at the law faculty of the university, and his
teacher was the renowned legal philosopher Hans Kelsen, a
friend and university colleague of Sigmund Freud’s. Kelsen
combined academic life with practical work, having been
legal adviser to the Austrian war minister during the war.
He helped draft Austria’s revolutionary new constitution, a
model that was followed by other European countries, the
first with an independent constitutional court with the
power to interpret and apply the constitution and to do so
at the request of individual citizens.
In 1921, Kelsen became a judge on the Constitutional
Court, bringing Lauterpacht into direct contact with a new
idea, in Europe if not America: individuals had inalienable
constitutional rights, and they could go to a court to
enforce those rights. This was a different model from that
which protected minority rights, as in Poland. The two key
distinctions—between groups and individuals, between
national
and
international
enforcement—influenced
Lauterpacht’s thinking. In Austria, the individual was
placed at the heart of the legal order.
By contrast, in the rarefied, conservative world of
international law—dominated by the idea that the law
served the sovereign—the notion that an individual had
rights enforceable against the state was inconceivable. The
state must be free to act as it wished, unless it voluntarily
accepted rules of constraint (or if such rules were imposed,
as they were for Poland under the Minority Rights Treaty).
In short, the state could do whatever it wanted to its
nationals. It could discriminate, torture, or kill. Article 93
of the Versailles Treaty, as well as the Polish Minorities
Treaty that would later cause my grandfather Leon to be
stripped of his Polish nationality, in 1938, might have
offered protections for some minorities in some countries,
but it offered no protection for individuals generally.
Lauterpacht caught the eye of his professor. Kelsen noted
his “extraordinary intellectual capacity,” a young man from
Lemberg with a “truly scientific mind.” He also noticed the
German spoken with the “unmistakable accent of his
origin,” for the pupil was an Ostjuden, a “serious handicap”
in 1920s Vienna. It’s the likely reason why the degree he
was awarded in June 1921 was graded only as a pass, not a
distinction.
Lauterpacht immersed himself in the study of
international law and a doctoral thesis on the new League
of Nations. He worked under two supervisors: Professor
Leo Strisower, who was Jewish, and Professor Alexander
Hold-Ferneck, who was not. In July 1922, he was awarded a
doctorate in political science, graded “excellent.” The mark
surprised Kelsen, who knew Hold-Ferneck to be a vigorous
anti-Semite (fifteen years later, after the Anschluss, HoldFerneck would publicly—and erroneously—accuse his
university colleague Eric Voegelin of being a Jew, causing
the distinguished philosopher to flee to America).
In an environment that required Gustav Mahler to be
baptized into Roman Catholicism to be able to direct the
Wiener Staatsoper, Lauterpacht was confronted once more
by the reality of ethnic and religious discrimination. This
propelled him toward a new idea, on the “vital necessity” of
rights for individuals. Not lacking in self-confidence, he saw
himself as an intellectual leader. Contemporaries
recognized a fine advocate, a young scholar with a “biting”
sense of humor, fueled by a desire for justice. Dark-haired
and bespectacled, with a strong face and powerful eyes, he
was a private man who inhabited “a world of his own” yet
who was also politically engaged and actively involved in
Jewish student life. He became president of the
Hochschulausschuss, the coordination committee for
Jewish student organizations, and in 1922 was elected
chairman of the World Union of Jewish Students, with
Albert Einstein as honorary president.
On the side, he participated in more mundane activity,
helping to run a dormitory for Jewish students, which
meant hiring a housekeeper. They appointed a young
woman called Paula Hitler, unaware that her brother was
the leader of the fast-growing National Socialist Party.
Adolf Hitler turned up unexpectedly in Vienna in 1921, a
visitor “fallen from heaven,” as his sister put it, not yet
notorious.
32
SOUGHT AFTER as a speaker, at a university event
Lauterpacht was introduced to Rachel Steinberg, an
intelligent, strong-willed, attractive music student from
Palestine. She was much taken by the young law student,
“so quiet, so gentle—not a movement of hand—so unlike
the other students from Eastern Europe.” She liked the
absence of emotion in his character, and both were soon
smitten. On their first date, she played an early Beethoven
piano sonata, as set by her teacher, unnamed but described
in a letter only as “very lovely but not too easy to execute”
(maybe it was Sonata no. 8, the Pathétique?). Lauterpacht
invited Rachel to a concert at the Vienna Symphony Hall,
with a program that included Beethoven’s Seventh
Symphony, perhaps conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler.
She was entranced by the music and her companion, who
was polite and correct, with a quiet and acute sense of
humor. He dressed well, too.
Credit 32.1
Berlin, December 18, 1922, engagement
When Lauterpacht invited her to accompany him to
Berlin, she accepted. They lodged separately (she at the
Excelsior Hotel, he at a boardinghouse in the
Charlottenburg district), remaining in Berlin for three
weeks. On the evening of December 17, 1922—a day after
the assassination of the Polish president, Gabriel
Narutowicz, by a nationalistic art critic—Lauterpacht dared
to take her hand, kiss her on the lips, and declare his love.
Knowing of her desire to study at the Royal College of
Music, he offered a quick engagement, marriage, and a
move to London. She said she’d think about it, wondering if
he was serious.
He was. The next morning he returned to the Excelsior
with a telegram from his parents in Lwów, expressing
happiness at news of the engagement. Lauterpacht was
surprised, and probably irritated, that Rachel had not yet
written to her parents. She agreed to the engagement.
A month later, Rachel’s parents in Palestine too agreed to
the marriage. Lauterpacht wrote from Berlin to thank
them, “from my heart.” In February, the couple returned to
Vienna, where they married on Tuesday, March 20. Two
weeks later, they journeyed by train through Germany and
then by boat to England.
33
THE NEWLYWEDS ARRIVED in the northeastern English fishing
port of Grimsby on April 5, 1923. Lauterpacht traveled on a
Polish passport, Rachel on a document issued by the British
mandate government in Palestine. He enrolled at the
London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE),
she at the Royal College of Music. During the first months
in London, they lived at various addresses around the city,
including one flat off Regent Square and another close to
the Caledonian Road. The LSE, then under the influence of
Sidney and Beatrice Webb, progressive socialists, was a
happening campus on Houghton Street, opposite the BBC’s
Bush House.
Lauterpacht’s courses began in October, after he had
failed in his effort to be appointed to the chair in
international law at Lwów. At the LSE, he studied with
Arnold McNair, a lecturer in international law who came
from a distinguished family of Scottish intellectuals. An
intensely practical man with no great interest in theory or
the philosophy of law, McNair introduced Lauterpacht to
the Anglo-Saxon method, with its emphasis on cases and
pragmatism. McNair recognized his pupil as an exceptional
intellect, although something of an introvert among
strangers. Those who met Lauterpacht casually might not
appreciate “his real quality,” McNair noted, but the
professor and his wife, Marjorie, became “great and loyal”
friends, as Rachel would recall, and “a great admirer of
mine.” The McNair children and grandchildren called her
“Auntie Rachel.”
McNair’s pragmatic approach was reflected in his
writings, important reference works still today, on treaties
and on war. He was a man of balance, moderation, and
independence, traits that Lauterpacht appreciated as
British, rather different from the passions of Lwów and
Vienna.
When Lauterpacht arrived in London, his English was so
poor that he couldn’t easily be understood, even in asking
for directions. He might have read English before coming
to London, but he’d obviously not heard it spoken. “At our
first meeting we could hardly communicate,” McNair
reported, his pupil’s spoken English “barely intelligible.”
Yet within two weeks, McNair was “staggered” by
Lauterpacht’s fluency, the beautifully constructed English
sentences that became a feature of his writing. This was
achieved by attending a multitude of lectures, up to eight a
day, to develop his vocabulary and an ear for the sounds.
Evenings were spent “unendingly in the cinema,” although
quite how this helped was unclear: the great films of the
year, Harold Lloyd’s Safety Last! and James Cruze’s
landmark western The Covered Wagon, were silent movies.
Several people who knew him told me that Lauterpacht
had a soft and guttural voice and never lost the distinct
accent. He only became aware of how he sounded many
years later, after recording a talk for the Third Programme
of the BBC, now Radio 3. He was “astonished” when he
listened to the broadcast, dismayed about the “strong
continental accent.” He was said to have switched off the
wireless, poured himself a generous whiskey, and vowed
never to be recorded again. The upshot was that no
recording of his voice is known to exist.
34
WITHIN A FEW YEARS, Lauterpacht felt at home in London,
away from the continuing tumult of central Europe. He and
Rachel lived in a small house in Cricklewood, at 103 Walm
Lane, a leafy suburb of northwest London, not far from my
home. On visiting, I noticed that the entrance tiles were
gone, but the wooden embellishments around the front
entrance remained, now painted green. If Lauterpacht was
occasionally impecunious, McNair helped with a small loan.
The summer of 1928 was busy, with travel to Warsaw for
a conference of the International Law Association, of which
he was now a member of the British group. From there, he
traveled to Lwów to visit the family. His brother, David, was
married to Ninsia, a law student, with a young daughter,
Erica. His sister, Sabina, was also married, to Marcele
Gelbard (their only child, a girl called Inka, was born two
years later, in 1930). On the trip, he met old friends and
surprised new acquaintances with his fluency in Polish, his
first childhood language in Żółkiew and Lemberg. A senior
member of the Polish judiciary inquired how it was that he
spoke “such good Polish,” to which he responded tartly,
“Thanks to your numerus clausus” (a reference to the rules
that precluded further studies in Lwów).
Lauterpacht had by then acquired a third doctoral
degree, under McNair’s supervision. His thesis was called
“Private Law Sources and Analogies of International Law,”
perhaps not a winning title but a work of real significance.
It traced the influence of national rules on the development
of international law, looking for bridges between the two
systems, hoping in this way to fill the gaps in the
international rules. He continued to be influenced by
Kelsen’s belief in the power of constitutional review and
perhaps also by Sigmund Freud’s ideas, casting light on the
importance of the individual and the relationship with the
group. Lauterpacht would run with this theme, focusing on
the one amid the many.
One catalyst for his work was the creation of the first
global court of law, a product of the Versailles Treaty. Based
in The Hague, the Permanent Court of International Justice
opened its doors in 1922, aspiring to resolve disputes
between states. Among the sources of international law it
applied—the main ones were treaties and customary law—
were “general principles of law recognized by civilised
nations.” These were to be found in national legal systems,
so that the content of international law could draw on the
better-established rules of national law. Lauterpacht
recognized that this connection between national and
international law offered a “revolutionary” possibility of
developing the rules so as to place more limits on the
supposedly “eternal and inalienable” powers of the state.
Pragmatic and instinctive, a creature of his life and law
courses in Lemberg, Lauterpacht believed in the possibility
of reining in the power of the state. This would be achieved
not by aspiration, whether of writers or pacifists, but
through ideas that were rigorous and rooted, to do justice
and contribute to “international progress.” To this end, he
wanted an international law that was less isolated and elite,
more open to “outside influence.” His thesis—to use
general principles of national law to strengthen
international obligations—was published in May 1927, to
great scholarly acclaim. Today, nearly a century on, it
continues to be recognized as a work of fundamental
importance.
The book brought wider recognition and, in September
1928, a job as an assistant lecturer in law at the LSE.
McNair thought him to be fortunate in his choice of
country. “I do not think that outside the sporting set and
the Stock Exchange set there is very much feeling against
individual foreigners,” he explained, perhaps optimistically,
even if there was a “good deal of antiforeign feeling” in
Parliament and in the press. “Happily for us,” McNair
thought, Lauterpacht chose a life in Britain. Still, McNair
teased him about his continental pretensions. Why use the
word “norms”? he asked—far too “highbrow” for the
philistine
British.
Practical
McNair
encouraged
Lauterpacht to become a barrister and assimilate into
London’s legal life, to embrace the establishment. This was
achieved, but only up to a point (in 1954, as a candidate to
be the British judge at the International Court of Justice,
Lauterpacht was opposed, unsuccessfully as it turned out,
by Attorney General Sir Lionel Heald, M.P., on the grounds
that Britain’s “representative” on the Hague court should
“be and be seen to be thoroughly British, whereas
Lauterpacht cannot help the fact that he does not qualify in
this way either by birth, by name or by education”).
McNair identified his protégé as a man without “a trace
of the political agitator in his temperament,” yet with a
“passion for justice” and the “relief of suffering.” McNair
believed the events he lived through in Lemberg and
Vienna from 1914 to 1922 prompted a belief in protecting
human rights as a matter of “vital necessity.” Individuals
should “possess international rights,” an innovative and
revolutionary idea then and, in many quarters, still now.
If Lauterpacht missed Lwów, it was for the family, not the
place. His anxieties were hardly helped by letters from his
mother, who wrote that things were “not too well at home
for the moment,” a reference to economic troubles. In
1928, she made a first visit to London to see her new
grandson, Elihu, born that year. Her son welcomed her but
railed against his mother’s expressions of individuality,
objecting strongly to her “painted nails,” forcing her to
remove the nail polish.
He was equally resistant to his mother’s efforts to
influence Rachel, who adopted a fashionable Louise Brooks
bob and fringe. “Incandescent” when he saw the new style,
Lauterpacht insisted that she return to the bun, prompting
a major row between the couple and a threat from Rachel
to leave him. “I can and must have my private harmless life
without you bullying me.” In the end, however, Rachel
conceded: the bun was still in place when I met her, more
than fifty years later.
Individual rights for some, but not for the mother or the
wife.
35
FIVE YEAR LATER, in January 1933, Hitler came to power, a
matter of great concern to Lauterpacht. An avid reader of
The Times, he might have read the paper’s lengthy extracts
of Mein Kampf, describing Hitler’s years in Vienna and the
observation that Jewish culture was a “spiritual pestilence,
worse than Black Death.” One extract, setting out Hitler’s
views on Jews and Marxism, explicitly denied “the value of
the individual among men,” emphasizing the importance of
“nationality and race” and the role of religious destiny. “By
fighting against the Jews I am doing the Lord’s work,”
Hitler wrote.
The National Socialists were on the rise, with serious
implications for Lwów and Żółkiew. Poland signed a
nonaggression pact with Germany and cast aside the 1919
Minorities Treaty. In September 1935, the Nuremberg
decrees were passed in Germany, to protect the purity of
the Aryan race. Marriage and sexual relations between Jew
and German were prohibited; Jews were stripped of
citizenship and most rights and banned from employment
as lawyer, doctor, or journalist. It was a far cry from
Cricklewood in north London, where Lauterpacht lived.
In 1935, Lauterpacht’s parents, Aron and Deborah,
visited London, reporting that life in Lwów was more
difficult than ever, with a collapsing economy and rising
discrimination. The family had moved from Teatralna Street
to May the Third Street as a period of relative stability
ended with the death in May of Marshal Piłsudski. By
contrast, life in Walm Lane was comfortable. Lauterpacht
was on the up, promoted to reader in law at the LSE, with a
blossoming reputation. In 1933, he’d published a second
book—The Function of Law in the International Community
—to further acclaim, a work that Lauterpacht considered
his most important, touching on the theme of the individual
in international law. He’d launched a pioneering collection
of reports of international law cases from national and
international courts—the Annual Digest and Reports of
Public International Law Cases, today called the
International Law Reports. He also completed a new
edition of volume 2 of Oppenheim’s International Law, the
treatise used by foreign ministries around the world, a
volume on war law, in which the protection of civilians had
a central place. “The well-being of an individual is the
ultimate object of all law,” Lauterpacht wrote in the
preface. The words were prescient, a radical vision for an
increasingly establishment figure.
Credit 35.1
Lauterpacht, Rachel, and Eli, Walm Lane, 1933
Lauterpacht didn’t shirk the big issues of the day. He
wrote a paper titled “The Persecution of the Jews in
Germany,” proposing action by the League of Nations to
prevent discrimination on grounds of race or religion.
When one reads the paper today, it feels tentative, for
Lauterpacht was a pragmatist who knew that international
law as it then was allowed Germany to persecute anyone
not deemed to be an Aryan. Yet he believed that such
persecution disturbed international relations and should be
prohibited by “the public law of the world.” He hoped
Spain, Ireland, or Norway might act on an issue of political
morality. They didn’t, and the paper had no discernible
impact.
Lauterpacht had his critics. As Jews flooded out of
Germany, the League of Nations official with responsibility
for refugees, James G. McDonald, decided to resign in
protest at governmental inactions. To prepare a strong
letter, he sought the help of Oscar Janowsky, a historian
from the City College of New York, who traveled to London
to enlist the support of Lauterpacht. The encounter went
badly. Lauterpacht might be a “brilliant youngish man on
the rise,” Janowsky wrote, but he was an “overbearing”
man of self-importance who “pontificated like a judge”
when he should be advocating a cause. Lauterpacht
declined to work with one of Janowsky’s graduate students,
prompting a tirade about Lauterpacht’s pomposity and
arrogance, the absence of moral stature or generosity of
spirit. A “libelous stereotype of the Galitzianer,” Janowsky
wrote of him.
Lauterpacht wanted to “steam-roller” his own views and
dismiss those of others. “Fidgety and impatient” during
meetings, he “showed that he was no gentleman” and
became patronizing and angry if he didn’t get his own way.
Sensing he’d misbehaved, Lauterpacht sent Janowsky a
grudging letter of apology. “I love to see my own work torn
to pieces when I submit it to criticism,” he wrote. “I may be
committing the mistake of thinking that others approached
it in the same way.”
Despite the pressure, Lauterpacht resisted calls to
support Germany’s treatment of the Jews being referred to
the international court in The Hague. The idea was
“inadequate, impracticable and highly dangerous.” He was
not the easiest of colleagues, as he recognized the limits of
international law, with gaps allowing states to discriminate
and adopt measures such as the Nuremberg decrees.
In 1933, he qualified as a barrister. An early brief came
from Haile Selassie, who wanted an opinion on Italy’s
annexation of Ethiopia. In November 1936, another brief
arrived, a request from a distinguished Swiss academic for
a legal opinion on the protection of Jews in Upper Silesia. If
they couldn’t get diplomatic protection, could they at least
leave Germany with their possessions? Lauterpacht
declined to give a legal opinion aimed at influencing the
British government: the aims sought by the Swiss academic
were simply not attainable.
Amid the gloom of world politics, Lauterpacht tried to
persuade his parents to move permanently to England.
Poland had by now shredded the 1919 Minorities Treaty, so
the Jews and other minorities of Lwów were stripped of
international legal protection. But Aron and Deborah
decided to stay put in Lwów, which was home.
36
ON A BRIGHT AUTUMN DAY, I sat with Lauterpacht’s son, Eli, in
a book-lined study at his home in Cambridge, looking
across the apple trees in the garden. Eli reminisced about
Walm Lane, the trams, and daily journeys to kindergarten
with his father, “on his way to the LSE.”
He recalled a father “totally wrapped up” in his work,
spending most of the time in a study at the back of the
house, the “quiet room.” He worked “too intensely” to put
his son to bed, but there was a closeness, a relationship
that was “loving” if not “intellectual,” with lighter
moments. Eli recalled his parents dancing around the living
room to the sound of Bizet’s Carmen and walks in the local
park, a time for Latin declensions and conjugations. “He
would make me recite them, very insistent.”
What about the family in Poland? Eli was vaguely aware
of the situation. “My grandparents came to visit us twice,”
but he only remembered 1935, when his father “begged
them to stay.” They decided against it, to remain with their
two other children. Young Eli had no sense of what lay over
the horizon. “My father must have been aware of the
incipient danger, but that sort of thing never came through
to me.”
Did they talk about Lwów?
“Never.”
Its influence?
“Not really, no.”
Did the fear of war weigh on his father’s mind? The
question produced a quizzical look, then silence. That’s
interesting, he said, but no. “He kept that to himself.
Maybe he shared it with my mother, but what was
happening in Poland was completely shut off. We never
talked about the situation in Lemberg. He found other
things to talk about.”
I persisted.
“Well, it was a horrendous period,” Eli eventually
conceded. “He knew that something terrible could happen,
not necessarily that it would happen or that it would
happen the way it did.”
His father was detached, for protective reasons. Eli
explained, “He went about his life and his business, tried to
persuade his parents to come. There was occasional
correspondence, of which, alas, we have no copies. He
didn’t return to Poland to see his parents. I don’t know that
he was detached, but the relationship with his parents was
one of detachment, although I knew he loved them very
much. I doubt if he and my mother ever sat down to discuss
‘should we tell the boy about this?’ ”
Did he talk about his Polish past?
“No. What was part of the household was the fact that he
had been brought up in an Orthodox Jewish household in
Poland. He would take us through the Passover Seder,
singing it in the traditional way, which I loved, the melody
still persists in my head. But I have no recollection of any
substantive conversation about his Polish life.”
Never?
“No, not ever.”
Eli was silent for a little, then said, “He was busy, getting
on with his work.” This was followed by a weary, soft sigh.
37
“GETTING ON with his work” brought further success. In late
1937, the boy from Żółkiew was elected to the prestigious
chair of international law at Cambridge University. In
January 1938, Lauterpacht traveled by train from King’s
Cross station to take up his new post, which came with a
fellowship at Trinity College. Letters of congratulation
arrived from Kelsen and colleagues at the LSE. Philip NoelBaker, the director, offered warm congratulations, as did
Sir William Beveridge, a colleague who helped
accommodate German refugees when he wasn’t thinking
about creating a modern system of welfare.
“My feelings of you have always been one of profound
gratitude,” Lauterpacht told Beveridge in reply, for the help
with academic refugees, and “great affection.”
The Cambridge news brought a proud and happy
response from Lwów. “My dearest and beloved son!”
Deborah wrote. “For this piece of good news I thank you a
thousand times.” The letter hinted at financial difficulties,
with Aron at work in distant Gdańsk. “We cannot be happy
together,” she wrote.
In September, Lauterpacht and his family moved to a
larger, semidetached house at 6 Cranmer Road in
Cambridge, bought from the McNairs for eighteen hundred
pounds, on a tree-lined street of generously proportioned
homes, many with their own driveways. There were sitting
rooms, a dining room, a butler’s pantry, and a scullery for
the cooking. Meals were served punctually—one o’clock for
lunch, seven o’clock for supper—announced by a brass
gong. Tea was served at half past four, often with a slice of
Victoria sponge cake from Fitzbillies, the local bakery that
still operates today.
The first floor had a bedroom each for Lauterpacht,
Rachel and Eli, and Lauterpacht’s study. This was where he
worked, often with classical music in the background,
seated in an elbow chair made of walnut, behind a large,
leather-topped mahogany desk, looking out over the
garden. It was stocked with apple, plum, and greengage
trees, which Lauterpacht liked to prune, and daffodils,
roses, and lily of the valley, his favorite flowers. He
attached importance to a weed-free lawn, mowed by a
gardener, retaining throughout his life a fear of catching
cold if his feet touched wet grass. For this reason, in such
conditions he always walked on his heels, toes tipped
upward
to
minimize
contact
with
the
ground.
“Picturesque,” Eli recalled.
The Lauterpachts were comfortable but not wealthy. The
decoration was modest, and for the first decade there was
no central heating. A rare concession to extravagance was
the purchase of a motorcar for ninety pounds, a
secondhand blue Standard 9 Saloon manufactured in
Coventry. Hersch was not a relaxed driver and would
become highly agitated if the speed ever exceeded fifty
miles an hour.
The street’s other residents reflected Lauterpacht’s
varied new world. Their immediate neighbor, at No. 8, was
Dr. Brooke, a retired cleric. David Winton Thomas, regius
professor of Hebrew and once a rugby player for Wales,
lived across the street at No. 4. Farther along, at No. 13,
lived Sir Percy Winfield, the Rouse Ball Professor of English
Law, the country’s leading authority on the law of tort
(Winfield on Tort, still in use today, was credited by the
historian Simon Schama as the book that finally
extinguished any interest he might have in the law).
Sir Ernest Barker, professor of political science, lived at
No. 17, hard at work on Britain and the British People.
Professor Arthur B. Cook, professor emeritus of classical
archaeology, lived at No. 19. No. 23 was occupied by
Professor Frank Debenham, professor of geography and the
first director of the university’s Scott Polar Research
Institute (as a young man, he accompanied Robert Falcon
Scott on his last expedition to the Antarctic, missing out on
the ill-fated final leg to the South Pole because of an injury
suffered while playing football in deep snow).
Lauterpacht liked to walk to Trinity and the nearby law
faculty. Punctilious and always attentive to appearance—he
lectured in a dark suit and gown—he was often seen in a
much-loved homburg hat. On one occasion, during a train
journey from The Hague to Switzerland, the beloved hat
“flew out of the window and lay beautifully on the line,” an
event worth writing about to Rachel, as was the time spent
at the Bureau des Objets Trouvés in Lausanne. The hat was
never found.
Rachel was still living in London when her husband
delivered his first lecture in Cambridge. Not overly
burdened by modesty, he thought it to have been a “quite
eloquent” affair. The student newspaper Varsity reported
him to be a “first-class lecturer, with a well-practiced and
polished technique,” one who made great use of his hands,
“to good purpose.” If there was a discernible fault, it was
that he “window gazes.” Varsity noticed another trait:
“What private joke causes that little smile to hover
eternally on his lips?” Astonishment perhaps that he had
made the journey from Żółkiew to Cambridge.
In this idyllic environment, the background noises were
increasingly ominous. Germany occupied the Sudetenland,
then attacked Czechoslovakia. Lwów and Żółkiew were
much on Lauterpacht’s mind.
38
GERMANY INVADED Poland on September 1, 1939. Two days
later, on a Sunday morning, Prime Minister Neville
Chamberlain announced that Britain had declared war on
Germany. The family gathered in the study at Cranmer
Road to listen to the broadcast, Lauterpacht in a highbacked chair, his wife and son in deep, square green
armchairs, facing the Pye wireless. Eli was eleven years
old.
He
recalled
the
excitement,
although
not
understanding “what it would mean in terms of human
suffering.” His father received the news calmly. The house
was put on a war footing, food supplies brought in,
blackout curtains hung. Life went on, lodgers arrived,
Lauterpacht taught and wrote. Forty-two years old, he was
too old to fight, but he did join the Home Guard, where he
was known affectionately as “Lumpersplash.”
The Germans entered Lwów and Żółkiew in September
but quickly retreated, as ancient Olga of Żółkiew had told
me. The Soviets took charge as Poland’s independence was
extinguished, a country divided by Hitler and Stalin.
Letters from Lvov, as it now was, described life under the
Soviets as difficult but without grave dangers.
In June 1940, Germany overran France, the moment
when Leon was separated from my mother, his infant child.
The occupation of Paris prompted a decision to evacuate Eli
and Rachel to America. Lauterpacht accepted a lecture
tour with the Carnegie Foundation, so in September that
year the family sailed to America on the RMS Scythia of the
Cunard White Star Line. Three days later, another ship
from Liverpool, the City of Benares, was torpedoed by a
German U-boat, killing 248 people, including many
children. The Lauterpachts arrived in New York in early
October, moving into an apartment in Riverdale in the
Bronx, near the Hudson River. Eli enrolled at Horace Mann,
missing the former pupil Jack Kerouac by a year.
Lauterpacht went off to lecture.
In Washington, the British political scientist Harold Laski
introduced him to the upper echelons of the American legal
community. Not at war with Germany, the United States
was intent on helping London, but within the bounds
permitted by the rules on neutrality. Lauterpacht spent
time with British embassy officials and visited Justice Felix
Frankfurter at the Supreme Court. Frankfurter, whose wife
had a Lemberg connection, thanked Laski for the
introduction, prompting the LSE academic to express the
hope that Lauterpacht’s sanity and tolerance might make
the Americans understand the values for which Britain was
fighting.
Lauterpacht lectured across America for two months,
covering six thousand miles and fifteen law schools and
universities. The central theme of his lectures offered a
riposte to critics of international law, stressing its
importance at a time of crisis, not least for the protection of
individuals. Yet letters home reflected doubts and anxiety
at the war’s direction. “Will there be a Cambridge to go
back to?” he asked Rachel. To Eli, he offered simple advice:
“Do your best; be modest; try to win friends and keep their
friendships.”
In December 1940, Laski introduced Lauterpacht to
Robert Jackson, President Roosevelt’s attorney general.
“I’m going to be in Washington in the first week of January,
can I pay you a courtesy call?” Lauterpacht wrote to
Jackson, who responded positively. A few weeks later, he
traveled to Washington, where he called on the State
Department legal adviser and met again with Justice
Frankfurter.
Looking for ways to help the United States support the
British without getting dragged into the war, Jackson had
his own reasons for meeting Lauterpacht. “What is
wanted,” he told Lauterpacht, was “a philosophy” to give
effect to America’s policy of “all aid to the Allies short of
war.” Jackson mistrusted American international lawyers,
many of whom resisted engagement.
Lauterpacht wanted to help but knew the situation to be
delicate. He got a green light from the British embassy in
Washington to prepare a legal memorandum on options for
the United States to help Britain without violating the rules
on neutrality. Jackson introduced some of these ideas into
the Lend-Lease Bill that President Roosevelt got through
Congress a few weeks later, controversial legislation that
allowed the administration to support Britain and China.
The first effort at cooperation between Lauterpacht and
Jackson bore fruit.
Lauterpacht passed along other ideas, some of which
made their way into a speech Jackson delivered in March
1941. The attorney general pleaded with lawyers present—
a conservative group—to adopt a modern approach,
drawing on Lauterpacht’s ideas. Those who broke the law
must pay a price, Jackson explained, so America must be
allowed to aid the victims. The New York Times reported
Jackson’s
speech
as
“extraordinarily
significant,”
applauding the rejection of outdated, nineteenth-century
conceptions of law and neutrality. No doubt delighted by
the endorsement of his ideas, Lauterpacht refused the
honorarium offered by Jackson. When the speech was
delivered, he was on his way back to Britain, although
Rachel and Eli remained in New York.
39
LAUTERPACHT RETURNED to Cambridge at the end of January
1941, three flights on an Atlantic clipper, via Bermuda, the
Azores, and Lisbon. His travel companions included
Wendell Willkie, the Republican candidate defeated by
Roosevelt in the presidential elections just a few weeks
earlier. They spent much of the flight in animated
conversation about the state of the world. Willkie never did
make good on his acceptance of an invitation to visit
Trinity.
Lauterpacht’s return coincided with the arrival of an
increasingly rare communication from Lvov. “My Dear!” his
brother wrote, with news that the family was “relatively
well” and that “our dear old ones have aged in this period
by twenty years.” Under the gaze of the Soviet censors, the
letter offered coded messages. “We would like to see you so
that we could be together again,” David hinted, “in what
way it is up to you.” If they were to be reunited, it would be
for Lauterpacht to make the arrangements. The family
preferred “to be together in such times.” Could
Lauterpacht come to Lvov to get them? “You know our
wishes,” David concluded, somewhat cryptically due to the
censorship. “Stay healthy, we send you our kisses.”
The letter caused concern, but any steps he took to get
the family to Britain went unrecorded. He put effort into
lectures, the “troublesome” but distracting work on the
Annual Digest, and a new edition of Oppenheim’s
International Law. Food was comforting; because stocks in
Cambridge were limited, he made regular trips to his
favored delicatessen in Cricklewood, run by Mr. Ziedman.
He is a “blessing,” Lauterpacht told Rachel, somehow able
to get “all the frying oil I wanted” and other unobtainable
items.
Writing also gave him comfort. One letter went to
Leonard Woolf, whom he had known during his days at the
LSE, expressing condolence at the death of Virginia.
Another was sent to Rachel in New York, worrying about
the war’s direction as Yugoslavia entered on the side of the
Germans, more positive as to the recapture of Addis Ababa,
a rare success for his onetime client Haile Selassie. A letter
to Eli berated him for complaining about life in New York
while people in Britain lived “in a state of more immediate
anxiety and worries of all kinds.”
In April 1941, he received an invitation to lecture at
Wellesley College in Massachusetts. In May, he gave a talk
at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London on
“The Reality of the Law of Nations,” in which he once more
focused on the plight of individuals. He railed against
despondency and cynicism, putting the positive case for
international law and hope. This was something of a
challenge, given widespread reports that circulated as to
the “grievous violations” occurring across Europe. Such
acts by lawless states had to be confronted by
governments, he told the audience, by international
lawyers and “the will and exertion of the citizen.”
Lauterpacht found a voice that drew strength in
adversity, speaking to the “rights and duties of man.” The
passion was fueled by the arrival of a short letter from his
father, written on January 4, 1941. “Dearest!” he wrote
lovingly
to
his
son,
your
letters
“rejoiced
us
extraordinarily.” He was “totally becalmed” by the news
that the family was safe in America. In Lvov everyone was
“perfectly sound,” but no more than that. They hoped for
the best. Greetings were sent from Uncle David in Żółkiew.
“We heartily greet and kiss you all.” His mother added a
line of kisses.
Then came silence. “Write often to my family,” he urged
Rachel, offering an address in Lvov now in “Soviet Russia”:
ulica Obrony Lwów, a street named in honor of the
“Defenders of Lvov.” The family lived on May the Third
Street.
40
IN JUNE, Hitler cast aside the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and
ordered German troops eastward into Soviet-occupied
Poland. Within a week, Żółkiew and Lvov were in German
hands and academics rounded up, including Lauterpacht’s
teacher of Austrian private law, Professor Roman
Longchamps de Bérier. Arrested for the crime of being a
Polish intellectual, he was executed a day later in the
“Massacre of the Lwów Professors,” along with his three
sons.
Lauterpacht’s niece Inka gave me a firsthand account of
those days, a parallel to Clara Kramer’s account of the
arrival of the Germans in Żółkiew. I met Inka—the only
child of Lauterpacht’s sister—in the summer of 2010 in
Paris, in her tidy, small apartment near the Eiffel Tower.
She was intense and sparrowlike, flitting around the room
with great energy. Eventually, we settled at her dining room
table, draped in a fresh white cloth, illuminated by a single
ray of bright, clean sun. She offered black tea in a delicate
porcelain cup. Under an open window, she spoke softly,
without emotion.
On the table, we’d spread out a 1938 map of Lwów. She
was eight years old then, she told me, as she pointed out
my grandfather Leon’s home, a street on which she walked.
She asked to see the meager documents I’d brought. I
showed her a certificate issued to Leon’s father, Pinkas
Buchholz, in 1890. “It says he was born in 1862,” she
exclaimed, with an accent that reminded me of my
grandfather. He passed the exam for the manufacture of
eau-de-vie, but only with an “assez bien, good enough.” She
smiled. “Not the same as ‘good’!”
Her father, Marcele Gelbard, was a lawyer, in the family
tradition, like his father. Both men were blond; Gelbard
meant “yellow beard” in German, a name bestowed during
the
Austro-Hungarian
period.
Inka’s
memory
of
Lauterpacht in those days was vague, because he left for
Britain before she was born. As we talked of Żółkiew, she
said, “Oh dear, you have said it wrong. You don’t pronounce
the Z, it is pronounced ‘Julkiev,’ the Z is like a J. A soft J.”
Then she added, with a sigh, “I know it well, the town of my
mother, uncles, and grandparents, where I went after the
war.”
Credit 40.1
1949, London: Inka, with Rachel (left) and Lauterpacht (center)
We worked our way around the 1938 map of Lwów.
Although she never returned after 1945, she could show
me the street where Lauterpacht’s parents, her
grandparents Aron and Deborah, lived, 64 May the Third
Street, where they moved after Teatralna Street. It was
close to Szeptyckich Street, a few minutes’ walk from the
house where Leon was born, a “less prestigious area.” “We
used to eat at the Bristol or the George,” she recalled, the
fancy hotels.
“I could wander around Lwów until I was nine years old,
then it changed, when the Russians came, the end of the
life we knew.”
She took a small sip of tea, then another.
“Let me show you some photographs.” We passed to her
bedroom and a wardrobe, from which she removed a small
wooden box, containing photographs of her parents. There
was a letter from Lauterpacht, sent in the 1950s, and a
photograph at the Palace of Westminster in London with
her aunt and uncle, in the wig of a newly appointed king’s
counsel, a senior barrister.
We returned to the living room. Life before the Soviets
occupied Lwów in September 1939 was good. Inka
attended a small private school, unaware of discrimination.
“My parents hid it from me, and at school no one talked
about those things.” Her father was respected, a fine
lawyer, had good friends, most of whom were Jewish. There
were a few non-Jews around, Poles who “came for
cocktails,” followed by the Jews who came later in the
evening for dinner. There were no Ukrainians in her life.
Things changed “immediately” with the arrival of the
Soviets. “They let us stay in the same apartment, except we
couldn’t occupy the whole of it. First we got two rooms,
then we were allowed one room and the kitchen and the
right to use the toilet and bathroom.” She remembered the
address, 258 May the Third Street, or maybe it was No. 87,
close to the Lauterpachts, also on that street. It ran parallel
to Sykstuska Street, on which the photograph of the
barricade was taken during the battles of November 1918.
Her mother, “madly charming,” received a great many
invitations from the Russians. “The colonel who lived in our
apartment fell in love with her,” Inka exclaims, those years
were not too bad. Then the Germans arrived, in July 1941,
and the situation got much worse.
“Life carried on, because my father spoke German, but
not for most Jews. They had to leave their neighborhoods
unless they lived in the Jewish quarter. For some reason,
we were allowed to stay in a room in our apartment; it was
never fully requisitioned.”
Every so often, over a period of several days, “Aktionen”
were initiated, to round up Jews on the streets, those not
wearing Star of David armbands. Her father was wellknown and had to be careful, but fewer people knew her
mother, so she sometimes went out without wearing “le
truc.” “The thing,” that was what Inka called the armband.
“It was unpleasant and dangerous. We were not liked.
Before the war, they didn’t know who on the streets was
Jewish. Now they knew.”
We looked at a few black-and-white photographs I’d
brought. One was a postcard of the famous seventeenthcentury Żółkiew synagogue in a state of dilapidation. Did
she remember the building? “No.”
As Inka examined the postcard, close to her face,
something strange occurred. The doorbell rang. It was the
concierge, holding a single letter. Inka looked at it and said,
“It’s for you.” Curious, it was the first time I’d met Inka.
She handed me the letter, which was addressed to her,
from the Association of the Martyrs of Żółkiew. I opened it,
removed a pamphlet, placed it on the table.
On the front was a picture of the old synagogue in
Żółkiew. It was the same one I’d just shown her, the one she
couldn’t remember. A simple coincidence, and now she had
two copies.
41
IN AUGUST 1941, Lemberg and Galicia were incorporated
into Germany’s General Government. As Hans Frank
became the ruler, Lauterpacht planned a return to America,
to lecture at Wellesley College and take up a small space to
work at the Harvard Law Library.
The days before departure dragged, as the implications
of the German occupation sank in. “You know all about
Lwów,” he wrote to Rachel. “I do not like to express my
sentiments, but the thing is constantly with me like a
nightmare.” It was not possible to hide the fears, yet life
went on, as though he had “split his personality.” He was
“perfectly normal” in daily intercourse with people, going
through the motions, helping colleagues at Trinity,
entertaining
generals.
There
was
more
political
engagement: before leaving for America, he added his
name to a list of Cambridge academics offering support to
the Soviet Academy of Sciences for that country’s “heroic
fights against the common foe.”
Lauterpacht arrived back in New York in August 1941
and spent the autumn term at Wellesley. He visited
Harvard, spending weekends in New York with Rachel and
Eli. In October, he traveled to Washington to meet Francis
Biddle, Jackson’s successor as attorney general, who
wanted legal arguments that would allow America to attack
German submarines. Lauterpacht had stayed in touch with
Jackson, sending congratulations to him on his appointment
as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Jackson
responded with a friendly note and an offprint of the
Havana speech. Lauterpacht offered help with another
speech, on ending “international lawlessness,” but by the
time he passed on his ideas the war had taken a decisive
turn: on December 7, Japan attacked U.S. naval forces at
Pearl Harbor, causing the United States to declare war on
Japan. Within days, Germany had declared war on America.
The military and political situation was transformed when
the two men met in Washington early in 1942.
Around that time, nine European governments in exile—
including Poland and France—came together at St. James’s
Palace in London to coordinate their response to reports of
Germany’s “regime of terror.” Terrible stories were
circulating, accounts of mass imprisonments and
expulsions, of executions and massacres. These caused
these governments in exile to issue a declaration, in
January 1942, expressing a common desire to use the
criminal law to punish those “guilty” of and “responsible”
for atrocities. Perpetrators would be “sought for, handed
over to justice and judged,” an idea that became an official
aim of the war.
The nine governments established a commission on war
crimes to collect information on atrocities and
perpetrators, a body that would become the United Nations
War Crimes Commission. Churchill authorized British
government lawyers to investigate German war crimes
under the direction of Solicitor General David Maxwell
Fyfe. Within months, The New York Times reported that the
Polish government in exile had identified ten leading
criminals. The first name on the list was that of Hans
Frank,
just
above
Governor
Otto
von
Wächter,
Lauterpacht’s classmate from Vienna.
Against this background, Jackson delivered a speech
titled “International Lawlessness” at the Waldorf Hotel in
late January. Written with the assistance of Lauterpacht,
who attended as a guest, the speech described war and
atrocity and the need for law and courts, “the best
instrumentalities…yet devised to subdue violence.”
Lauterpacht now had a supporter for his ideas at the
highest level of American government. What he and
Jackson didn’t know was that the atrocities were about to
go up the scale of horror: three days earlier, at a villa on
the Wannsee, a lake near Berlin, a conference of senior
Nazis had secretly agreed on the “Final Solution.”
Lauterpacht spent several weeks in New York, working
with staff at the British embassy, attending conferences,
meeting the governor of New York, Herbert Lehman. There
was even time to relax with Rachel, to see films. Not much
taken by Bette Davis in The Man Who Came to Dinner, the
couple did enjoy Pimpernel Smith at the Rivoli Theater on
Broadway.
I understood why, watching it seven decades later. The
hero, a Cambridge academic played by the heartthrob actor
Leslie Howard (who was killed a year later when his plane
was shot down over the Atlantic by the Luftwaffe), takes on
the “gutterals and brown shirts” and smuggles victims out
of the Nazi terror, including his own daughter. “Singapore
may fall,” the New York Times reviewer chirped, “but the
British can still make melodramas to chill the veins.”
42
IN MARCH 1942, Lauterpacht returned to England, soon after
Japan occupied Singapore and as Germany sought to
extend its control over the eastern parts of Europe. Without
any news from Lemberg, Lauterpacht wrote frequently to
Rachel and Eli, who was enrolled at Phillips Academy in
Andover. “I am slightly depressed…because of the war
news,” he told them; they were “passing through a very
bad period.”
The food situation, limited by tight rations, did not
improve his mood. “I have altogether abandoned housekeeping,” and shops no longer delivered. “You have to get
everything yourself.” The garden offered a ray of light, with
daffodils providing “a glorious show,” a modest
compensation for the loss of his luggage at sea, somewhere
between America and Britain.
He focused on another edition of Oppenheim’s
International Law and a ninth volume of International Law
Reports, to include cases from the opening years of the
war. These touched on the civil war in Spain, Italy’s
conquest of Abyssinia, and the “legislation and practices of
the Nazi regime in Germany,” with their “ominously
general characteristics.” Lauterpacht selected the cases
with care. He chose one judgment of the German Supreme
Court, an appeal by a German Jew convicted of having sex
with an Aryan woman in violation of the 1935 Nuremberg
decrees. The case raised a somewhat novel legal issue:
What if the act of sex occurred outside Germany? The
Supreme Court ruled that the Nuremberg decrees applied
to a sexual act that occurred in Prague, the reasoning a
marvel of teleological simplicity: the purpose of the
Nuremberg decrees would be undermined if they didn’t
apply to acts committed abroad. Thus, a German Jew who
cohabited with a German national of German blood outside
the Reich “must be punished…if he has persuaded the
German woman to join him abroad for this purpose.” A
decision such as this, Lauterpacht commented, confirmed
the need for an international court of review.
—
Lauterpacht was active beyond scholarship. He continued
to offer advice to Jackson, whom he saw as a bastion
against American isolationism as the United States entered
the war, a man with “the ear of the Administration.” He
wrote to Eli and Rachel in America, telling them of his
involvement in a new project, to examine “the question of
so-called War Crimes” and how to punish Germans guilty of
international crimes in occupied territories. The project
started in June 1942, when Arnold McNair was appointed
to chair the “Committee on War Crimes” to implement the
Declaration of St. James. McNair invited Lauterpacht to
join his team, and in early July he attended a first meeting
of the committee. McNair asked him to prepare a
memorandum on legal issues.
“I got quite a swollen head,” he told Rachel, as the
committee decided to “model” its work on his approach.
The meeting offered other opportunities, because it
involved lawyers from the governments in exile based in
London. In this way, he wrote to his wife, he hoped to do
“much good…for the minorities of eastern Poland,” because
the Poles would be “the principal factor” in the postwar
settlement of the minorities. This work caused him to focus
in a practical way on justice and the responsibility of
individuals, not just the states they served.
That summer another new project landed on his desk: the
American Jewish Committee invited him to write a book on
the international law of human rights and offered a
generous fee (twenty-five hundred dollars, plus expenses).
This was an enticing new subject, so he accepted. He said
he would write a book “on the International Bill of Rights of
the Individual (or something like that).” He started work on
July 1, optimistically hoping to complete it by the end of the
year.
In December, he tested out some new ideas on
international law at a lecture in London, delivered in an
atmosphere of “solemnity.” It went rather well, he told
Rachel. There was “some embarrassing worship of your
husband.” His central theme was a call for governments to
embrace the “revolutionary immensity” of a new
international law that would protect the fundamental rights
of man.
43
LAUTERPACHT DIDN’T KNOW that his work on the new book in
the summer of 1942 coincided with a visit to Lemberg by
Governor-General Hans Frank to celebrate the first
anniversary of Galicia’s incorporation into the General
Government. At the very moment that Lauterpacht turned
to an international bill of rights, Frank set in train the
implementation of the Final Solution in Galicia, as agreed
to at the Wannsee Conference. The impact on Lauterpacht’s
family was immediate and devastating.
Inka Katz told me what happened. She remembered
Frank’s visit, the fear it engendered, the consequences that
followed. Her grandfather Aron was the first to be taken,
on August 16, from the flat he shared with Lauterpacht’s
brother, David, an old man removed from a wardrobe in the
bathroom, where he was hidden.
“Two days later, on August 18, Hersch’s sister, my
mother, Sabina, was taken by the Germans.” Inka spoke
with absolute calm. “It was on the street; my mother was
rushed by Ukrainians and German soldiers.” Inka was alone
at home, saw the events from the house, looking out of a
window. Her father was at work a few houses away, in their
old apartment. “Someone went and told him that my
mother had been taken,” Inka said; a concierge told him. “I
understood what had happened. I saw everything looking
out of the window.”
How old was she?
“I was twelve, not a child anymore. I stopped being a
child in 1939. I understood what was happening, I knew the
dangers and all the rest. I saw my father running after my
mother, behind her, on the street.”
She paused and looked out of the elegant window, across
Paris, sipping black tea. “I understood it was over.”
She observed from the upper window, remembering
points of detail for which a child has a special memory.
“I was watching discreetly; I wasn’t brave. If I had been, I
would have run after her. But I knew what was happening. I
can still visualize the scene, my mother’s dress, her high
heels…”
Did she know that maybe she might not see her mother
again?
“There was no ‘maybe.’ I knew.”
Lauterpacht’s sister was taken by the Germans as her
daughter watched.
“My father didn’t think about me. You know what? I
rather liked that. For him, it was simply that they had taken
his wife, the woman he loved so much. It was just about
bringing her back.”
She admired the fact that her father, in his dark gray suit,
went looking for his wife.
Then her father was taken. He never returned; Inka was
on her own.
“I heard nothing more from them. They had taken
thousands of people. Who knows what became of them? But
I knew what was going to happen to them. A few days later,
I left the apartment, as I knew the Germans would come
and take it. My grandmother went to the ghetto; I refused,
could not imagine myself there. I went to my governess, the
ex-governess; she remained close to my parents because
my father was good to her. She wasn’t Jewish, although she
could have been. I told her what had happened, and she
said, ‘Come and stay with me.’ She wasn’t just a governess;
it was more than that. She was…what do you call it, a
nursemaid? My mother didn’t breast-feed me; she did. She
gave me her breast.”
As we talked, Inka poured cups of dark Russian tea.
“I went there, not for very long, because of the searches.
‘She’s my little niece,’ the governess told anyone who
asked. I didn’t really look Jewish at all, but I certainly didn’t
look like her niece. They didn’t really believe her, so she
sent me off to the countryside to be with her family.” Inka
couldn’t stay there long.
“I left for other reasons. There was a man who liked
young children. I knew about that; I’d read about these
things, knew the jokes about such men. So I left. I went to
stay with someone else my father had helped. It was the
end of 1942, still around Lwów, but not in the Jewish
ghetto. I didn’t stay long. The woman pretended I was a
cousin, or a niece, or her cousin’s daughter. It didn’t work.
Her family got anxious. I would listen through the door; I
could hear them say, ‘She doesn’t look like family.’ It was
true.”
So Inka left. “It was very difficult. I didn’t know where to
go anymore. I would wander in the streets all day long and
sleep where I could. In Poland, in those days, the front
entrances of apartment buildings were locked at night, at
ten or eleven, so I could go in before then, very quietly up
to the attic, in a building where they didn’t know me. I
could sleep there, on the stairs next to the grenier. It was
frightening when someone came in the night. I was scared,
alone, worried I’d be handed over to the police.”
She continued, calmly. “That lasted for a month or two. It
was the end of the autumn. My mother had told me where
her jewelry was, where the money was. I lived off that.
Then I was robbed. One morning I woke up and everything
had been taken. There was nothing left.”
Alone and desperate, the twelve-year-old girl found a
client and friend of her father’s, an elderly lady, willing to
take her in for two months.
“People started talking, so then I had to leave her. She
was a Catholic; she talked about putting me into a convent.
We went together. The nuns said yes, we will take her.”
The convent was on the outskirts of the town.
“I don’t remember the name,” Inka says. “It was very
small, not well-known. There were twelve nuns, connected
to the Jesuits.”
Inka speaks slowly, in a whisper, as though approaching
an awkward denouement.
“The nuns said there was one condition to my staying. My
family never knew this.” Inka was momentarily
uncomfortable, on the verge of breaking a lifelong silence.
“They said I must be baptized. I had no choice. Maybe it
was fortunate that I wasn’t any more observant then than
today. I was lucky to grow up in a household that wasn’t too
religious.”
Seventy years on, she retained a sense of discomfort. One
woman, coming to terms with a feeling that somehow she
had abandoned her group to save herself.
44
LAUTERPACHT, who knew nothing about what was happening
to the niece he had never met, decided to give up alcohol
and start a slimming cure. This was not on doctor’s orders,
merely a sensible precaution. That was what he told
himself, as he continued with Home Guard duties and
thought about what a bill of rights might contain. He didn’t
know that his father had been taken on August 18. That
same day he sent a memorandum to the War Crimes
Committee in London, setting out the paucity of
international practice on the prosecution of war crimes.
From the east, bits of news and rumor trickled through.
In September, an article appeared in The Times on Nazi
atrocities in Poland. This ignited a feeling of kinship with
Jewish colleagues in Cambridge, reflected in a letter to
Rachel. “Last night I went to the Synagogue of the German
refugees as a sign of my feeling of solidarity with their
sufferings.” He sent food parcels into the Lemberg void,
addressed to David, unaware of the situation in the city.
Eighteen months had now passed with no news from the
family. Solace was hard to find. He listened to music, which
generated a feeling of sentimentality, remembrance of a life
past.
“It is 6 pm on a Sunday and I have been fasting all day,”
he wrote to Rachel in December, a day of fast and
intercession for the murdered Jews in Poland. “I felt I
would like to join in.”
Lwów was perpetually on his mind. “My very dear ones
are there, and I do not know whether they are alive. The
situation there is so terrible that it is quite conceivable that
they may prefer death to life. I have been thinking the
whole day about them.”
45
OVER THE NEXT YEAR, the direction of the war turned. Rachel
returned to Cambridge in the summer of 1943, although Eli
remained in America. Lauterpacht spent many hours alone
in his study, listening to Bach, writing and looking over the
garden, watching the leaves change, worrying in silence
about the family stuck somewhere in Lwów. The greengage
tree lost its fruit, the grass was mowed less frequently, yet
as the dark days of winter enveloped Lauterpacht he
focused on positive developments. In September, Italy
capitulated. A “day of elation,” Lauterpacht exclaimed. It
felt “good to be alive,” he wrote, for the first time in ages,
beginning to “witness the downfall of evil.” It offered a
tangible sign of “the triumph of the forces of progress.”
He delivered a series of lectures to test out the emerging
ideas on the rights of man. The project was taking longer
than expected, the main challenge being to find practical
ways of putting the individual at the heart of a new legal
order. A lecture in London, then another in Cambridge,
during which he “solemnly” read out a draft of his
International Bill of Rights of Man, described by a member
of the audience as “a historic occasion.” His thinking had
evolved. “The Bill of Rights, if it is to be effective, must be
enforced not only by the authorities of the State, but also
by international actors.” This evoked the possibility of an
international court. To Eli, he offered a simple description
of his working conditions: “Imagine the study, with
windows open, and with the moving strains of Bach’s St.
Matthew’s Passion filling the room, and you will have an
idea of the atmosphere.”
The Germans were now in retreat across Europe. The
work of the War Crimes Committee became more pressing
as Lauterpacht’s ideas filtered into the work of the United
Nations War Crimes Commission, created a year earlier by
the Allied governments. The international dimension
allowed a renewal of contacts with American members of
the commission and with Philip Noel-Baker, his former LSE
colleague, now a member of the British government,
offering access to power and influence.
In March 1944, he completed a “biggish article” on war
crimes, hoping to influence a possible decision on a trial.
He offered help to the World Jewish Congress for its
investigations of the atrocities, telling Rachel, who was
back in New York, that the congress wanted a special
committee to investigate “the terrible war crimes which
Germany has perpetrated against the Jews.” Yet his focus
was on the protection of individuals, not groups or
minorities, recognizing that the Polish Minorities Treaty
had not achieved its aims. Still, the situation of groups
could not be ignored, and he recognized that because the
Jews were “the greatest victim of the German crimes,” it
was “proper” that “anti-Jewish atrocities should be made
the subject of a special investigation and report.”
Lauterpacht was not alone in thinking about these
matters. In November, another book was published in
America, by a former Polish prosecutor named Rafael
Lemkin. Titled Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, the work
adopted a different approach from Lauterpacht’s, with the
aim of protecting groups, for which he invented a word for
a new crime, “genocide,” the destruction of groups.
Lauterpacht wrote a review of Lemkin’s book for The
Cambridge Law Journal, hinting that he wasn’t a great
supporter of Lemkin’s ideas.
Lemkin’s book was “imposing” and offered an
“informative” survey of German laws and decrees, with
“interesting and sound observations.” It was an
“invaluable” product of “prodigious industry and
ingenuity.” Yet Lauterpacht’s tone was detached and
lukewarm, especially about the new word, “what he calls
‘genocide’—a new term for the physical destruction of
nations and ethnic groups.” It may be “a scholarly
historical record,” Lauterpacht concluded, but it “cannot be
accurately said that the volume is a contribution to the
law.” He commended the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace for publishing the book but made no
mention of the author by name. The review was skeptical
about the new term and its practical utility. The implication
was clear: Lauterpacht was concerned that the protection
of groups would undermine the protection of individuals. It
should not be the primary focus of the law.
I mentioned this to Eli. He thought his father’s failure to
mention Lemkin by name reflected nothing more than “a
detached academic assessment.” “My father never met
Lemkin, and I never heard of him coming to the house,” he
added. I sensed in Eli a certain reluctance, so I pushed him
a little harder.
“I have a very vague recollection that my father didn’t
think much of Lemkin,” Eli said. “He thought him to be a
compiler, not a thinker.” Lauterpacht the father was not
keen on the concept of genocide. “He may have resented
the intrusion into the field of international law of a personal
notion like genocide, not supported by practice. He
probably felt it was impracticable, an unrealistic approach.
He was pragmatic, always careful not to push things too
far.”
A “personal notion” because it was one that touched the
situation of his own family? I inquired.
“He may have thought that genocide was going a bit far.”
Going a bit far because it was impracticable?
“Exactly. My father was a very practical man, and he
worried whether judges could deal with certain issues,
knowing that judges can’t resolve all problems.”
Did his father fear that elevating the role of groups would
undermine the individual?
“Yes, that would have been a factor,” Eli replied. He
referred me to the seventh edition of Oppenheim’s
International Law, written after the war, which was very
dismissive of genocide. The concept was replete with
“gaps, artificialities and possible dangers,” Lauterpacht
wrote; it would constitute a “recession” from the protection
of individual human rights.
At the end of 1944, Lauterpacht had submitted the
corrected page proofs of his book on individual rights. By
then, as Leon was reunited with his wife and daughter in
newly liberated Paris, Eli was back in Cambridge, the
strands of another family being reunited.
46
IN FEBRUARY 1945, Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin met at
Yalta in the Crimea, where they took a number of important
decisions. Europe would be divided. Lvov, liberated by the
Red Army a few months earlier, would be in Ukraine and
under Soviet domination, not in Poland as the Americans
had wanted. German leaders would be treated as criminals
and prosecuted.
Three months later, the fighting in Europe was over. On
May 2 Harry Truman, who became president following the
death of Roosevelt, appointed Robert Jackson to head the
prosecution team in the trial of major German war
criminals. A few weeks later, on June 26, the United
Nations Charter was signed in San Francisco, by which
governments agreed to introduce a new commitment to
“fundamental human rights,” to respect the “dignity and
worth of the human person.”
In
June,
Columbia
University
Press
published
Lauterpacht’s book on an international bill of the rights of
man. Reflecting his hope for a new international legal
order, he invoked Churchill’s commitment to the
“enthronement of the rights of man,” to place the
protection of the individual at the center of the
international legal order. Lauterpacht’s preface set out as
his aim an end to the “omnipotence of the State.” Reactions
were largely positive. “Persuasive,” “penetrative,” “breathtaking,” “full of ideas,” a “pragmatic and realistic”
combination of legal theory and political knowledge. Yet
there were also critics of his hope that “Jim Crowism and
extermination camps” would no longer be matters
governed exclusively by national laws. His ideas, it was
claimed, were dangerous, and no more than a harking back
to a long-disappeared constellation of seventeenth-century
ideas. Lauterpacht was “an echo of the past rather than a
portent of the future,” it was said.
The draft articles set out in the book were presented as a
“radical innovation in international law.” With little to go on
by way of precedent, beyond a modest effort of the Institut
de Droit International and the ideas of H. G. Wells and
various wartime international committees, Lauterpacht’s
draft bill included nine articles on civil rights (liberty,
religion, expression, assembly, privacy, equality, and so on).
Some matters were left out, with no mention of any
prohibition on torture or discrimination against women.
Equally striking, with the benefit of hindsight, was his
approach to the situation of nonwhites in South Africa and
“the thorny problem of actual disenfran-chisement of large
sections of the Negro population in some States of the
United States,” recognition of the realpolitik necessary to
allow those two countries to engage with an international
bill. Five other draft articles covered other political rights
(elections, self-government, minority rights, and so forth)
and, to a limited extent, economic and social rights relating
to work, education, and public assistance in case of
“undeserved want.” Lauterpacht was silent about property
rights, a nod perhaps to the political wind from the east
and to political considerations in the U.K.
Against the background of the UN Charter and the ideas
set out in his book, Lauterpacht welcomed the idea of a war
crimes trial and the appointment of Jackson as prosecutor.
The American judge turned to him for help. The two men
met in London on July 1 as work began on the drafting of
an agreement to create the first international criminal
tribunal to try the German leaders. Yet even then, a year
after Lemberg had been liberated from German rule, he
had no word as to the fate of the family.
At the end of July, on a warm Sunday morning, Jackson
left Claridge’s hotel in Mayfair to be driven to Cambridge
for a meeting with Lauterpacht. Jackson sought the benefit
of the academic’s “good judgment and learning” on
difficulties faced by the Four Powers, particularly the
charges to be brought against the defendants. No such
case had ever been brought, and there were “stubborn and
deep” differences with the Soviets and the French.
The Four Powers agreed on some points. The tribunal
would exercise jurisdiction over individuals, not states, and
the defendants would not be allowed to hide behind the
authority of the state. There would be eight judges, two
from each of the Allies, a principal and an alternate. The
Americans, British, French, and Soviets would each
nominate a prosecutor.
Differences remained, however, as to the procedures to
be followed. Would the German defendants be examined by
the judges, as in the French system, or by the prosecutors,
as in the Anglo-American system? Of all the difficulties, the
most serious concerned the list of crimes with which to
charge the defendants. The differences centered on the
wording of draft Article 6 of the Charter of the
International Military Tribunal, the governing instrument of
the new international court.
The Soviets wanted three crimes: aggression; atrocities
against civilians in pursuance of the aggression; and
violations of the laws of war. The Americans wanted these
three crimes, as well as two more: waging an illegal war,
and the criminality of membership in the SS or the
Gestapo. Jackson sought Lauterpacht’s help to bridge the
gap, worried that the French would support the Soviets.
Jackson had recently returned from Germany, where he
visited Hitler’s private offices, to the news that Churchill
and the Conservatives had lost the general election to
Labour, who might be more sympathetic to the French and
the Soviets. He feared the new British government would
support the Soviets. On his return to London, on Saturday,
July 28, he received new British proposals on the trial,
which had, worryingly for Jackson, been accepted by the
French.
These were the matters that occupied Jackson as he
drove to Cambridge the next day, accompanied by his son,
Bill, two secretaries, and a staff lawyer. He took
Lauterpacht to lunch at “a lovely old country inn,” which
might have been in Grantchester, then they headed back to
Cranmer Road. On a warm summer’s day, they sat in the
garden, on a freshly cut lawn “as smooth as a tennis court
and closely cropped.” A sweet smell permeated the garden;
Lauterpacht delighted that the visitors noticed. As they
talked, a young child wandered in from a neighboring
garden, and Rachel served tea and coffee. Accounts did not
record whether a Victoria sponge cake from Fitzbillies was
served.
Jackson set out the difficulties. There was general
support from the French and the British for the Soviet
approach, so the issue was how best to package a solution.
Lauterpacht suggested that titles be inserted into the text,
a way of introducing compromises. This might help to
develop the law in a progressive way.
He suggested that the word “Aggression” be replaced
with “The Crime of War” and that it would be preferable to
refer to violations of the laws of warfare as “War Crimes.”
Titles would make it easier for the public to understand the
actions being prosecuted, useful to garner support, adding
to the legitimacy of the proceedings. Jackson responded
positively to his idea of titles.
Lauterpacht offered a further thought. What about
introducing a new term into international law to address
atrocities against civilians, a matter on which the Russians
and the Americans were divided and on which he had an
unspoken personal interest? He pitched it. Why not refer to
the atrocities against individual civilians as “Crimes
Against Humanity”?
A version of the formulation had been used in 1915, when
the British and the Americans decried Turkish actions
against Armenians, but that declaration was not legally
binding. The term was also used in the work of the United
Nations War Crimes Commission, but again not in a form
that was legally binding. Jackson liked this idea too, a
practical and attractive way forward. He said he’d think
about it.
Later, the entourage visited Trinity College, walked
through the great Christopher Wren library, toured the
private college gardens. Jackson admired the trees.
Katherine Fite, one of Jackson’s lawyers, loved the “backs”
and the little bridges over the river Cam, “the most
beautiful thing I remember in England,” she wrote to her
mother.
47
BACK IN LONDON, on July 31, Jackson circulated a revised
draft of the statute. He used Lauterpacht’s idea of titles
and included the new definitions of the crimes. There, in
black and white, for the first time, a reference to “Crimes
Against Humanity.” “We should insert words to make clear
that we are addressing persecution, etc. of Jews and others
in Germany, as well as outside of it,” Jackson explained to
the Allies, “before as well as after commencement of the
war.”
Such language would extend the protections of
international law. It would bring into the trial Germany’s
actions against its own nationals—Jews and others—before
the war began. It would cover Leon’s expulsion from the
Reich in November 1938 and the measures taken against
millions of others that occurred before September 1939. No
longer would a state be free to treat its people entirely as it
wished.
—
On August 2, the Four Powers met in a final effort to reach
agreement. Sir Hartley Shawcross, the strong-willed new
British attorney general, who liked to ruffle feathers and
was described as “the best looking man in English public
life,” attended with David Maxwell Fyfe, his predecessor,
retained for continuity. The discussion of draft Article 6—
with Lauterpacht’s titles—was highly contentious, so left to
the end. The Soviet general Iona Nikitchenko was strongly
against titles; they should be removed because they
“complicate things.” His deputy, Professor A. N. Trainin,
welcomed the titles from a “theoretical point of view” but
objected to their vagueness. They should be removed.
Jackson disagreed, firmly. The classification was useful. The
titles, suggested to him by an eminent scholar of
international law whom he did not name, were
“convenient.” They would help the public to understand
differences between the crimes; public support was
important.
The Soviets relented, allowing crimes against humanity
to became a part of international law, aimed at the
protection of individuals. A week later, on August 8, the
final text was adopted, signed, made public, a historic day.
By Article 6(c) of the charter, the tribunal’s judges were
given power to punish individuals who had committed
crimes against humanity, defined to cover
murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other
inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before
or during the war; or persecutions on political, racial or religious
grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the
jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of the
domestic law of the country where perpetrated.
The paragraph is worth reading very carefully. In
particular, look out for the lonely semicolon in the second
line, which will cause a problem. Lauterpacht thought the
text to be overly broad but wasn’t worried that the use of
the semicolon might give the tribunal jurisdiction over acts
that occurred before the war began. “Paragraph 6(c) of the
Agreement—Crimes against Humanity—is clearly an
innovation,” he told the British Foreign Office, but it was an
enlightened innovation, one that offered “a fundamental
piece of international legislation.” It affirmed that
international law was not only law “between States” but
“also the law of mankind.” Those who transgressed it would
have no immunity, even if they were leaders, a reflection of
the “outraged conscience of the world.”
—
Shawcross gave Lauterpacht a seat on the new British War
Crimes Executive, which replaced McNair’s committee.
Would he assist with the preparation of the trial, Shawcross
asked, and help write the British arguments? Lauterpacht
accepted the invitation. A few days later, he received a note
from Jackson, offering thanks for the hospitality in
Cambridge and the “painstaking memorandum” on crimes.
Not all of your suggestions were heeded, Jackson noted,
but “all helped to clarify our thinking on the subject.”
Jackson hinted at future cooperation. “I shall be in London
from time to time and will be seeing you again.”
Article 6 of the statute offered a professional and
intellectual leap but little by way of personal comfort. Four
years had now passed without word from Lemberg or
Żółkiew. “Daddy does not say much,” Rachel told Eli. “He
never displays much emotion.”
48
A FEW DAYS AFTER the charter was adopted, someone noticed
a minor discrepancy in the texts of Article 6(c) on crimes
against humanity, the problem of the semicolon. This
caused a discrepancy between the Russian version, on the
one hand, and the English and French texts, on the other.
An amendment was quickly agreed on, to bring the English
and French versions into line with the Russian text. This
was achieved on October 6, when the semicolon was
removed and replaced with a comma.
The consequence could be significant. The semicolon
seemed to allow a crime against humanity that occurred
before 1939, when the war began, to come within the
jurisdiction of the tribunal; the replacement comma,
however, seemed to have the effect of taking events that
occurred before the war began outside the jurisdiction of
the tribunal. There would be no punishment for those
actions, if crimes against humanity had to be connected to
war. Whether this was intended, or would have this effect,
would be for the judges to decide.
A few days after the disappearance of the semicolon,
Shawcross complained to Lauterpacht about another
development, the terms of the specific charges against the
individual defendants. The Four Powers were having “very
great difficulty” with the indictment, a document
Shawcross didn’t like “at all.” “Some of the allegations in it
will, I think, hardly pass the test of history or, indeed, of
any serious legal examination.” Shawcross could have been
referring to the unexpected introduction of a new word in
the indictment, “genocide.” It had been added at a late
stage at the insistence of the Americans over strong British
objections. Lauterpacht would not have let it in. “We shall
just have to make the best of this rather unsatisfactory
document,” Shawcross told Lauterpacht.
It was decided that the trial would be held in
Nuremberg’s Palace of Justice, to open in November. The
Allies identified twenty-four lead defendants, to include
Hermann Göring (Hitler’s vice-chancellor), Albert Speer
(minister of armaments and war production), and Martin
Bormann (personal secretary to the führer). The seventh
name would interest Lauterpacht: Hans Frank, governorgeneral of occupied Poland, whose territory included
Lemberg and Żółkiew.
“If you could find it possible to be there for a few days at
the commencement,” Shawcross suggested, “it will be of
great assistance to us.” There would be no fee paid, but
expenses would be covered.
Once again, Lauterpacht accepted the invitation.
PART III
Miss Tilney of Norwich
49
“WHO WAS Miss Tilney?” I asked my mother.
“No idea,” she replied, without much enthusiasm.
Then she said, “I think she was the woman who brought
me from Vienna to Paris in the summer of 1939,” insisting
there was no more information. This was what Leon had
told her, many years after the event. “Pas important.” Not
important.
Apparently, Miss Tilney collected Ruth, just a year old,
from her mother, Rita. The handover occurred at the
Westbahnhof station. Farewells exchanged, Miss Tilney and
the infant boarded the train to Paris, an impossibly difficult
moment for a mother. On arrival at the Gare de l’Est, the
infant was delivered to Leon. Miss Tilney wrote her name
and address on a scrap of paper, in pencil. Au revoir. They
never saw each other again.
“She saved your life?”
My mother nodded.
“You didn’t want to know who she was, to see her, to find
out more, thank her?”
“No.”
“You didn’t want to know why she did what she did?”
“No.”
50
THE MANNER OF my mother’s departure from Germanoccupied Vienna, three days after her first birthday and
without the company of a parent, was obscure. I
understood the reluctance to unlock the memory.
No one left alive knew the details, and the documents I
could find offered few clues. There was the passport issued
in my mother’s name in December 1938, three fading
stamps and a few swastikas. One stamp was dated May 4,
1939, a permit that allowed the infant a single trip out of
Austria, with a right of return. There was an exit stamp
issued two and a half months later on July 22, in the
Austrian town of Feldkirch, on the Swiss border, east of
Zurich. An entry stamp, marked “Entrée,” was issued the
next day, July 23, in France. The passport had a swastika on
the cover, but no bright red J. The infant was not identified
as Jude.
Rita remained in Vienna. That fact had always troubled
my mother, raising questions as to the circumstances in
which Rita had chosen—if she had a choice—not to
accompany her only child to Paris. Necessity or choice?
Necessity had its attractions.
Beyond the passport, the only other clue was the
yellowing scrap of paper that waited patiently in Leon’s
documents. No more than two inches square, it was folded
in half with a few words written firmly in pencil on one
side. “Miss E. M. Tilney, ‘Menuka,’ Bluebell Rd., Norwich,
Angleterre.” No message, only a name and an address.
—
For two years, the yellow scrap hung above my desk.
Occasionally, I looked at it, wondering where it was written,
who wrote it, and what might have caused Miss Tilney to
undertake so perilous a journey, if indeed she did. The
information must have been important, because Leon kept
the scrap for the rest of his life, six decades.
The Norwich address was a hundred miles to the
northeast of London, beyond Cambridge, off the Norfolk
Broads. I could find no house named Menuka, with its
middle-class English connotation.
I started with census records and phone directories for
Norwich for the early twentieth century, surprised to find
no fewer than five women with the name E. M. Tilney. Two
could be discounted on grounds of age: Edna M. Tilney
would have been too young to travel to Vienna (born in
1924), and Edith M. Tilney too old (born in 1866). That left
three names:
1. E. M. Tilney, born in 1915, from the nearby village of
Blofield.
2. Elsie M. Tilney, born in 1893, aged seven in the 1901
national census, living at 95 Gloucester Street,
Norwich, with her parents.
3. Edith M. V. Tilney, no date of birth, who married Mr.
Hill in 1940.
The telephone directory listed an E. M. Tilney in Blofield.
If it was the same person, she would now be ninety-five
years old. I called the number over several days and
eventually spoke to Desmond Tilney, who had a fine Norfolk
accent. “My sister Elsie May died three years ago,” he said
sadly. Did she make a trip to Vienna in 1939?
“Oh, I don’t know, never heard anything about that.” He
would ask around. Two days later, he called, disappointed
to report that his sister didn’t travel abroad before the war.
I moved on to Elsie M. Tilney, born in 1893. The 1901
national census recorded that she lived in a detached house
with her parents, Albert (a stationer’s clerk) and Hannah,
and four brothers and sisters. The name and birth date
turned up two further hits on the Web. On January 1, 1960,
a woman of the same name and age disembarked from the
MV Stirling Castle (of the Union Castle line) at
Southampton docks, having traveled from Durban, South
Africa. The ship’s manifest identified Miss Tilney—middle
name Maud—as a “Missionary” returning from Basutoland.
Fourteen years later, in October 1974, a woman of the same
name and age died in Dade County, Florida.
The information on this woman’s demise offers a zip
code. For a fee of six dollars, I obtained five numbers and a
city: 33134, Miami. A search for the name Tilney and that
zip code turned up several Tilneys in the area, two of whom
died in 1974. One was Frederick, the name of Elsie Maud
Tilney’s younger brother, according to the 1901 national
census. In the Miami white pages, I found several Tilneys in
the same zip code area. The first I reached, a few days
later, was Germaine Tilney.
51
“YES, I knew Elsie Tilney,” Germaine Tilney told me, crisply.
Elsie was her late husband’s aunt, the older sister of her
father-in-law, Dr. Frederick Tilney. Forty years had passed
since she died, so Germaine didn’t remember too much
about Aunt Elsie, a “gracious lady” who came into their
lives in the mid-1960s. She devoted herself to missionary
work, as an evangelical Christian, then retired in Florida to
be with her brother Fred. “She was quiet, kept herself to
herself, and proper.” Occasionally, she visited for family
meals, usually on a Sunday.
Germaine had no photograph and recalled little about
Miss Tilney’s earlier life, apart from a brother in Norwich,
a preacher called Albert, and missions to obscure places.
“Maybe she spent time in North Africa,” Germaine
wondered, digging deep, but had no information about the
wartime years or any trip to Vienna. The subject of the war
was somewhat delicate, because Germaine had German
origins. “Very early on,” Germaine explained, “my husband,
Robert, gathered the family together to say that we would
never talk about the war.” During the war, her father-inlaw, Frederick, and his wife, Nora, hosted visiting British
soldiers stationed in Miami.
Germaine asked how much I knew about Miss Tilney’s
brother Frederick.
“Nothing,” I responded. He had an interesting life, she
explained. He came to America in the 1920s, “became a
famous bodybuilder, and discovered Charles Atlas, who was
his friend.” Germaine referred me to Fred’s autobiography,
Young at 73—and Beyond! I found a copy (later offered to
my mother for her seventy-third birthday) and a picture of
Fred. In the book, he described a tough, rough, poor
childhood in Norwich, an overbearing father (also a
preacher), and his long partnership and friendship with
Charles Atlas.
Germaine introduced me to her nephew John. Our only
telephone conversation was cut short, whether by intention
or accident was unclear. Nevertheless, it threw up a single,
excellent clue.
“Elsie Tilney hated the Germans,” John said suddenly and
without explanation. “She just hated them.” Did something
happen during the war? He remembered no details.
The vague outlines of a life emerged. Miss Tilney came
from a family of preachers, went on mission in southern
Africa, disliked Germans, lived her last years in Coconut
Grove, Miami. I trawled through African mission archives
(more plentiful and enticing than might be imagined),
which offered a lead to an archive at the University of the
Witwatersrand library. There I found documents about Miss
Tilney’s mission to South Africa, after the war. Among the
papers were several handwritten letters.
I compared the handwriting in the letters with the scrap
of paper. They were identical. The missionary and Miss E.
M. Tilney of Bluebell Road were the same person. The
letters suggested a strong-willed character and provided
information about time spent in Portugal and before that in
France. So I turned to French archives, from which a single
letter emerged, dated February 1942, written by a French
military officer to one Otto Landhäuser, the commandant of
Frontstalag 121. This, I discovered, was a German
internment camp in the spa town of Vittel. The letter
identified twenty-eight female prisoners held at the camp,
whom the Germans wished to exchange for prisoners held
by the British. Among the names was “Elsie M. Tilney, née
en 1893,” holder of a British passport, interned by the
Germans at Vittel.
Germaine had mentioned a brother, the preacher Albert
Tilney, and this opened another line of inquiry. Albert
turned out to have been associated with the Surrey Chapel
in Norwich, founded by Robert Govett, a fellow of
Worcester College, Oxford. Govett established the chapel
because of his desire to be more faithful to the Scriptures,
motivated by logic (“fearless in pursuing a point to its
rational conclusion”), independence (refusing “the ordinary
doctrines of post-Reformation Protestantism”), and
simplicity (employing “language direct and plain such as all
could understand”). I came across a copy of the chapel’s
centenary pamphlet, published in 1954, which included
information about a missionary band established in 1903. It
listed all the chapel’s missionaries. Among them was one
who left Norwich for Algeria in 1920, and there was a
grainy black-and-white photograph. It showed a purposeful
young woman with a strong face, hair swept across her
forehead, in a simple, elegant dress. I was looking at Miss
Elsie Tilney, after two years of searching.
Credit 51.1
Elsie Tilney, 1920
52
THE SURREY CHAPEL TURNED OUT to be a thriving community in
the heart of Norwich, under the direction of its pastor, Tom
Chapman, to whom I sent an e-mail. He replied within the
hour, excited about a “fascinating inquiry,” hoping that it
was “the same Elsie Tilney!” He forwarded my e-mail to Dr.
Rosamunde Codling, the chapel’s archivist. The next
morning, I received an e-mail from Miss Codling, who was
“almost certain” that their Miss Tilney and mine were the
same.
Dr. Codling connected Miss Tilney to her preacher
brother, Albert (she directed me to one of his tracts,
Believers and Their Judgment, available years ago from
“Mr. A. J. Tilney, 66 Hall Road, Norwich, for 6d per doz. 3⁄6
per 100, “post free”). Other references to Miss Tilney
followed, found in the chapel’s newsletter. She was a
“doughty” opponent of modernism, Dr. Codling explained.
Her “sphere of work” was simply stated: “Jews.”
A few weeks later, I made the first of several trips to
Norwich. Dr. Codling was keen to help, because this was
the first she (or anyone at the Surrey Chapel) had heard of
the story I was now sharing, delighted that the child of a
“saved Jew” had made contact. I was welcomed with great
warmth by the pastor and Dr. Codling, who brought Eric,
an older member of the congregation, to our meeting. Eric
remembered Miss Tilney as “a pretty young lady, with a
sweet mellow voice.” He said this a little mischievously.
“You don’t associate missionaries with being pretty, do
you?” he added, wondering aloud whether she ever married
(there was no record that she did). Eric recalled Miss
Tilney at Sunday school, talking about Africa, an exotic
subject on which the children knew little. “We had a map of
the British Empire but knew nothing about African culture,
the people, or Islam,” Eric explained. “Everything we knew
we got from her, the pictures she brought and the pictures
she painted.” She was “special,” passionate about Algeria.
This was the mid-1930s.
Dr. Codling accompanied me to the Surrey Chapel
archives at the Norwich Records Office, where we spent an
afternoon plowing through a great number of documents,
looking for any sign of Miss Tilney’s activities. These
weren’t hard to find: she was an avid letter writer, who also
wrote short articles for various evangelical magazines, an
articulate and astute observer. As Europe embraced
fascism and anti-Semitism, she chose another path. The
archive material made clear that she was living in Paris in
the spring of 1939, when Leon arrived in the city.
She joined the Surrey Chapel in February 1903 as a tenyear-old, then left on mission to Algeria and Tunisia in
1920, where she worked for more than a decade. In
November 1927, she was based in the small town of
Nabeul, on Tunisia’s Mediterranean coast, working with a
Madame Gamati. She wrote of visits to Jewish homes, of
the “great” welcome she received as she sought to save
Jews by bringing them to Jesus (there is no mention of any
success). Occasionally, she returned home, spending the
summer of 1929 in Bournemouth, at the summer
convention of the North Africa Mission. Someone took a
group photograph, in which she holds an infant in her
arms, one of the few images I found.
In the 1930s, she devoted her activities to the well-being
of Jews, having joined the well-established Mildmay
Mission. A farewell note prepared by the Surrey Chapel
began with a reference to the governing credo: “To the Jew
first.” She stayed in close contact with David Panton, the
chapel’s pastor, influenced by his writings in The Dawn,
which he edited. She must have seen the piece Panton
wrote after The Times published the article on July 25,
1933 (the one likely read by Lauterpacht in Cricklewood),
on a speech by Hitler, under the headline “By Fighting
Against the Jews I Am Doing the Lord’s Work.” Panton
attacked the führer’s “anti-semitic fury” as irrational and
insane, a hatred that was “purely racial and fanatical,” with
no religious basis. Hitler’s views were “entirely
independent of the individual Jew’s character or conduct,”
Panton wrote. The article would have spurred Miss Tilney,
who was living in Djerba, Tunisia. A year later, in the spring
of 1934, she moved to France to take up a new activity, to
devote herself to “work amongst Jewish people in Paris.”
By October 1935, Miss Tilney had settled in Paris. The
chapel’s “Missionary Notes” reported an article in Trusting
and Toiling, another journal, which described a narrow
escape from a serious accident. Walking along a busy
thoroughfare in Paris, Miss Tilney was about to step off the
pavement into the road when “a gentleman pulled her back
only just in time to prevent her being knocked down by a
motor-car.” Of particular interest, indeed a matter for
rejoicing, was the fact that the rescuer was “a JEW!!”
In 1936, she moved into the North Africa Mission house
in Paris. Speaking excellent French and Arabic, she
reported on a visit to the Paris mosque, a building that held
no charms for her because of its “Gospel-denying doctrine.”
It did, however, offer an excellent couscous in an Arab
setting and opportunities for silent prayer and witness (she
took pleasure in offering the Gospel of Luke to a “genuinely
delighted” waiter from Tunis). She wrote of the mosque’s
interior, its “exotic loveliness of flowers, foliage and
fountains in the sun-flooded courtyard,” but left feeling
“sad, sad,” because everything “seemed to bespeak an
insidious denial of our Lord.”
The years 1936 and 1937 were divided between Paris and
Gabès in southern Tunisia, where her work was dominated
by an outbreak of typhoid. She spent time with Arabs in
quarantine, tended to “a dear frightened old Jewess,” yet
was still able to look on the bright side because a typhoid
outbreak opened “many Jewish and Moslem doors,”
allowing her to observe “a young Jewish lad…intently
reading the Gospel of St. Matthew.” In Paris, she worked at
the Baptist church on the avenue du Maine in the 14th
arrondissement. “I was privileged to help and witness to
the suffering German Jewish refugees,” she wrote to her
friends in Norwich.
In September 1937, she was back in Paris, interviewing
German and Austrian Jewish refugees at the Baptist
church, working alongside Deacon André Frankl, the
American Board of Missions to the Jews’ representative in
Paris (born in 1895, the grandson of a Hungarian rabbi,
Frankl converted from Judaism and fought in the AustroHungarian army in 1914 on the eastern front, like Leon’s
brother, Emil). Miss Tilney reported that the pastor at the
Baptist church, Monsieur Vincent, was “throwing open his
Church—and heart—to Jewish people.” She spoke at
meetings for Jews, worked with refugees, and assisted at
interviews to decide on what help could be offered. In
January 1939, when Leon arrived in Paris, she was still
working at the Baptist church, and it must have been here
that she met him as he sought assistance in exile. Miss
Tilney’s activities were occasionally reported in Trusting
and Toiling, alongside items about the dire situation in
Lemberg, where “Jewish students at Lwów University, in
Poland, were attacked by anti-Semitic rioters.”
The Baptist church on the avenue du Maine was a hub for
refugees from Austria and Germany, including intellectuals,
academics, and doctors, aided by the Service d’Aide aux
Réfugiés (Assistance for Refugees). The church offered a
daily “soup kitchen” for hundreds of refugees like Leon.
Friday evening meetings were “especially moving, as the
largest part of the hall included Jewish refugees from
Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia.” Seven decades
later, I spent an afternoon at the Baptist church with
Richard Gelin, its current pastor. He shared archival
material, including information on the numerous baptisms
undertaken by Jews, hoping by this act to save themselves
from the coming danger. The archives included much about
the church’s assistance to Jewish refugees and their
children and several books describing the brave work of
Henri Vincent. I found no reference to Leon or Miss Tilney,
but several photographs showed Jewish refugees from
Austria and Germany, offering a powerful impression. One
showed a group sitting in the church hallway, “people in
difficulty waiting to be received.” I could imagine Leon in
this room, impecunious and quiet, alone in Paris.
On July 15, 1939, Trusting and Toiling reported that Miss
Tilney was working in Paris. A week later, at some risk, she
traveled to Vienna’s Westbahnhof train station to collect a
young child. She met Rita, who entrusted to her care an
infant who’d just passed her first birthday. I learned from
my mother that it was said that Rita went to the station
with Leon’s sister Laura, who brought her only child,
eleven-year-old Herta, who also expected to travel to Paris
with Miss Tilney. At the last minute, Laura decided that
Herta wouldn’t travel, the prospect of separation being too
painful. The decision was understandable but catastrophic:
two years later, in October 1941, young Herta was
deported to the ghetto in Litzmannstadt (Lodz) with her
mother. Within a few months, Herta and Laura had been
killed.
Miss Tilney traveled by train to Paris with only one of the
children. At the Gare de l’Est, she was met by Leon. I don’t
know how he expressed his thanks or if he ever saw her
again. She wrote out her name and address on the scrap of
paper, which she then gave to him, and they headed off to
different parts of Paris.
53
I MIGHT HAVE ENDED the research on Miss Tilney at this point
but was curious to know what came next, why she had
acted as she did, what motivated her compassionate
actions. She was in Paris when the war began a month
later, working with the North Africa Mission and hoping to
obtain a French carte d’identité that would allow her to
remain in France. The range of her work was “big,” looking
after “her Jewish protégés” to whom she was close. She
traveled often to Le Havre and other French ports, to bid
her “protégés” a safe farewell as they left for America. In
June 1940, the German army occupied Paris.
She was stuck in the city for several months, with no
outside contact. The silence worried her friends, and
readers of Trusting and Toiling were invited to pray for her
and those “whose lot is now more bitter than ever.” The
chapel voted to send relief money—the grand sum of ten
pounds—but it took over a year to arrive, leaving her
dependent on support from the American embassy. In
September 1940, she finally wrote that she’d been unwell
but was now better, enjoying the sunshine, racking up
debts, and “thinking constantly of family, and friends,
especially Surrey Road.”
The chapel members were so worried that they reached
out to Lord Halifax, Churchill’s foreign secretary, but
without success. The record noted drily that the secretary
of state for foreign affairs “presented his compliments to all
and sundry, but that is about all.” This was followed by
more silence. Enemy aliens in France were being interned,
and in early 1941 Miss Tilney was sent to a military
barracks in Besançon, with several hundred other British
and American women. In May, she was transferred to
Frontstaôlag 121 in the eastern French spa town of Vittel,
interned at the Grand Hôtel (it is now a part of Club Med),
where she would spend four years.
In February 1942, the British and the Germans tried to
agree to a prisoner exchange, but nothing came of the plan.
The Surrey Chapel sent her two pounds for dental
treatment, and in early 1943 worrying reports arrived that
she was suffering from malnutrition. Her letters were
short; she was “longing for the day of peace.” The third
anniversary of internment brought ominous developments.
Twenty-five hundred enemy aliens were being held in the
camp’s ten hotels, separated from the spa town by a threemeter fence topped with barbed wire. Most of the women
were from Britain, Canada, and the United States, but in
April 1943 a group of four hundred Jewish men, women,
and children arrived, mostly Poles from the Warsaw ghetto,
allowed out because they held South American passports.
They brought unbelievable stories of murder and mass
killing. Miss Tilney, who worked in the main office, the
Kommandantur, with the records and archives, learned that
the man in charge of the camp, Commandant Landhäuser,
had been ordered by Alois Brunner and Adolf Eichmann to
round up all the Warsaw Jews held in Vittel, to be
transported to the east. It was said that they held forged
passports.
In January 1944, Commandant Landhäuser transferred
the Warsaw Jews from the Hôtel Providence to the Hôtel
Beau-Site, separated from the general site. This caused
much commotion in the camp. In March, a first group of
169 Warsaw Jews were loaded onto the trains of Transport
No. 72, destined for Auschwitz. Among them was the poet
Isaac Katznelson, who hid his last poems in a bottle on the
site of the camp, later recovered. One of those poems came
to be widely celebrated, “The Song of the Slaughtered
Jewish People.”
There was resistance. Several of the Warsaw Jews
committed suicide, jumping from the upper floors of a hotel
or taking poison. Others tried to escape, among them a
young Pole called Sasha Krawec, who sought help from his
teacher of English, Miss Tilney. This I learned in Sofka: The
Autobiography of a Princess, a book by Sofka Skipwith,
another internee (who was, by happy coincidence, the
great-aunt of my neighbor in London). The book offered an
account of the disappearance of Sasha Krawec shortly
before the Auschwitz transport. “We felt that Miss Tilney, a
middle-aged worker in the Kommandantur who had been
extremely friendly with Sasha, must have some part in
this.”
Sofka Skipwith was right. Miss Tilney hid Sasha Krawec
for more than six months, until September 18, 1944, when
U.S. troops arrived. “It was only after the camp was
liberated that it was discovered that he had spent those
months in her bathroom,” Sofka wrote. One internee would
tell Miss Tilney’s brother Albert that his sister had “always
put herself last,” that she saved everyone’s passports and
“at great personal risk…hid for a period of sixteen weeks a
young Jew condemned to be sent to an annihilation camp in
Poland. She was given away to the Germans by an unknown
internee, but fortunately she was accused of hiding a girl,
and could therefore deny the charge.” Another internee
told Albert that saving Sasha Krawec was one of the
“outstandingly brave deeds of this war,” that he never met
anyone “so courageous and hard-working, so unsparing of
herself in the good work she has been doing.” Miss Tilney
was “one of the bravest persons I have ever met.”
After liberation, she was among the last to leave the
camp at Vittel, working for the U.S. Sixth Army and then as
a “secretary and hostess” at the Ermitage Hotel, a unit of
the U.S. Seventh Army’s Rest Hotel Group (where she was
considered conscientious, capable, imaginative, and loyal).
She then headed back to Paris and the Baptist church at
the avenue du Maine, bringing with her some possessions
of others who had been interned. Later, Miss Tilney left
France for mission in southern Africa, where she spent
much of the 1950s. After retiring, she moved to Florida to
be near her brother Fred in Coconut Grove. (A colorful
character, in 1955 Fred was convicted of mail fraud by a
Miami judge and ordered to stop selling his fake “bodybuilding liquids,” called Vi-Be-Ion, a mixture of brewer’s
yeast and vegetable flavoring.) “They would hang out
together here in Coconut Grove,” Germaine Tilney
explained. “Dr. Tilney, Mr. Atlas, and Elsie.”
Miss Tilney died in 1974, her papers destroyed. Unable to
find where she was buried, I contacted the obituarist at The
Miami Herald. After a few inquiries she established that
Miss Tilney was cremated and her ashes scattered over
Biscayne Bay, on the Atlantic coast of southern Florida.
There was no record that she ever told anyone about
Vienna or Vittel. Not at the Surrey Chapel, not in Florida.
54
FEW OTHER INTERNEES mentioned in Sofka were still alive, but
I located Shula Troman, an artist in her ninetieth year.
Interned in Vittel for three years until 1944, she lived in the
small village of Ploumilliau, in Brittany, a short walk from
the Atlantic. We met in Paris, in the Marais district, at Chez
Marianne, her favorite restaurant, on the rue des Rosiers.
She arrived in a bright red outfit, with a great smile and
much energy. A sense of adoration was the feeling that best
described my first impression of Shula, and it lasted.
—
Shula’s internment at Vittel was the result of a clerical
error. Living in a small French village, she applied for a
carte d’identité, and the town clerk saw on her birth
certificate that she was born in British Palestine (to which
her father moved in 1923 from Warsaw). Shula didn’t
disabuse him when he listed her nationality as British.
Later, because she was a Jew obliged to wear a yellow star,
the accidental reference to British nationality saved her life
after she was apprehended in Paris by the Germans.
Eventually, in the spring of 1941, she was sent to Vittel
and the sixth floor of the Grand Hôtel. “A lovely big room
with a view on a courtyard, a kind of suite, with a
bathroom,” she explained, quite gaily. Life in the camp
wasn’t too grim, although there were difficult periods,
especially when the Warsaw ghetto Jews arrived in 1943
with “unbelievable” stories. She took art lessons from a
dashing young Englishman, Morley Troman, with whom she
fell in love. Later they married. She was part of a literary
and political group, one that included Sofka Skipwith and
her closest friend, Penelope “Lopey” Brierley.
She showed me a photograph of herself, with her friend
Lopey, who wrote out a poem by Charles Vildrac on the
back of the image. “Une vie sans rien de commun avec la
mort”—“A life that has nothing in common with death”—she
wrote.
Occasionally, they put on innocuous, mischievous shows,
which Miss Tilney attended, including an evening of
“Oriental songs.” “It was marvelous,” Shula recalled, her
eyes bright. “In the front row sat all the dignitaries,
Commandant Landhäuser in the middle, the Gestapo
people next to him as guests of honor. We hadn’t provided
the lyrics, so they had no idea what we were singing. They
really liked one song, with the lyrics ‘Long life to the people
of Israel! Israel will live forever!’ We sang in Hebrew so
they didn’t understand. The whole front row stood and
applauded and cheered and asked us to do it again. It was
marvelous.”
Credit 54.1
Shula with Lopey Brierley, Vittel, 1943
She laughed. “We sang so strong; they applauded so
loudly. The real joy was that later they found out. We were
prohibited from doing more shows!”
Shula recalled with some affection Landhäuser, the hotel
keeper who became a camp commandant and had been a
POW in World War I, interned in England. “He liked the
English detainees, Christian or Jewish,” Shula explained.
“After the liberation, he gave me his card and invited us to
visit.”
Early on, however, she had become aware of a very odd
English spinster—she pronounced the name as “Mees Teelnay”—about whom she was cautious. “Miss Tilney was
working in the Kommandantur, on the internees’
documents and files; I was frightened of her, suspicious.”
The woman was ageless, gray-haired, a “very thin” and
“withdrawn” lady who kept herself to herself and was
deeply religious. She was rétrécie, tense, coiled up. Shula
was concerned that the Englishwoman might be an
informer, and she had another worry: she hoped to keep
her Jewish background a secret.
The relationship with Miss Tilney changed in the summer
of 1941, unexpectedly. “I was walking along a corridor
when I noticed Miss Tilney coming toward me. I was
nervous, because I knew she worked in the Kommandantur
and wanted to keep my distance. As she got closer to me, I
became more anxious. Then a very strange thing happened.
Just as she reached me, she fell to her knees, reached out,
took my hand, and kissed it. This left me feeling
estomaquée—flabbergasted—and I didn’t know what to do
or say. Then Miss Tilney said, ‘I know you are part of the
people who will save the world; you are one of the chosen
people.’ ”
Shula looked at me across the restaurant table. “Do you
realize how frightening that was?” she asked. “Here I was,”
she continued, “hoping that no one would know my secret,
that I was Jewish, and not really British. Can you imagine
how terrifying that was, what it could mean?” She worried
she would be reclassified as stateless, with all that implied
for possible deportation. “Then Miss Tilney said, ‘Don’t
worry, I will look after you, I will do everything to protect
you.’ It was very strange. For everyone else, being a Jew
was danger, but for Miss Tilney it was special.”
Shula paused, then said, “She was the very opposite for
those times.”
Miss Tilney kept a protective eye out for the young
woman. Later, after the liberation, Shula learned how she
saved Sasha Krawec. “We were in the yard of the camp,
free, amazed, in a sort of no-man’s-land under English
control. My friend Rabbit [Madeleine Steinberg] was
distraught when the Jews were moved to another hotel,
then came the transports to Auschwitz. We thought Sasha
was taken. And then, all of a sudden, six months later, there
he was in the yard, white-skinned, exhausted, half-crazy, at
his wit’s end. He was like a drugged crazy person, but he
was alive, saved by Miss Tilney. And then we learned how
she saved him, told him if there was another transport he
should give her a sign, which he did, and she summoned
him to her, which he did, dressed as a woman.”
Shula was silent again and then said quietly, “That is
what Miss Tilney did.” She wept. “Une femme
remarquable.” The words were barely audible.
55
ROSAMUNDE CODLING OF the Surrey Chapel arranged a
meeting with another member of the congregation,
someone who remembered Elsie. Grace Wetherley was in
her late eighties, initially resistant to meeting me because
she distrusted lawyers. She relented, and we met after a
Sunday morning service. Her face stood out in the crowd,
strong and lined, eyes alert and bright, her hair a beautiful
deep white. Yes, she remembered Miss Tilney, from the
early 1930s, at Sunday school, back from trips to North
Africa.
“I remember her brother better, although I didn’t go
much on Bert,” Grace said pointedly. “He didn’t have the
character his sister had, a bit erratic.” The memories
returned with the questions. “In 1935, I was made to sit by
her,” Grace said precisely, with excitement. “She was
absolutely fearless and devoted to children, that’s what
drove her.” She paused. “That’s what drives us.” A smile
illuminated her face. “As I was growing up as a teenager, I
wouldn’t say I idolized her, that’s the wrong word, but I
was full of admiration for the woman. She was fearless.”
Grace knew of the talk around the congregation about
Miss Tilney’s activities, of the rumors. “They said she was
saving Jewish babies.” She had no details; none of the
babies ever turned up at chapel. “It was during the war,
because she was abroad, and the idea was to get rid of the
Jews. She was fearless, and she saw these poor children,
and she saved them. She did a tremendous work, putting
her own life on the line.”
We sat, contemplative. “Now you’ve come to see us,”
Grace said with a smile. “I don’t think it was just because
they were Jewish children who were dying,” she added. “It
was a question of Hitler getting it all wrong, as usual. She
was driven by human compassion. After all, Christians are
supposed to go for whoever is in trouble.” She thought
back to that time and her own endeavors. “What challenges
have I faced?” she asked aloud. “Nothing much. I wasn’t
going to be marched off by the Gestapo. She had
everything to lose; she could have lost her life at any
minute.”
Grace knew that Miss Tilney was interned. “I don’t know
why,” she continued, “but she was a thorough nuisance on
the Continent, trying to save the lives of those whom Hitler
wanted dead.” She was proud to have known Miss Tilney, a
woman who was “fortunate to escape with her life.” She
brought our conversation to a close. “She was
compassionate, brilliant, gracious.” Pause. “And a thorough
nuisance.”
Grace was happy I had made my way to her
congregation.
“How nice that you have found us, how very nice that you
have seen the light.”
56
“YOU WEREN’T INTERESTED in what motivated Miss Tilney?” I
asked my mother. “What difference would it make?” she
replied. Yet I still wanted to understand why Miss Tilney
acted as she did, taking a journey to Vienna to save a
Jewish baby and hiding Sasha Krawec, at great personal
risk.
—
There were clues, from Grace Wetherley and others, so it
was to Rosamunde Codling at the Surrey Chapel that I
turned once again. She foraged and came back with some
information, a little hesitant.
“It’s a bit delicate,” she said, but she had an answer,
quite specific, in a textual sense. “It was about Miss
Tilney’s great love in Christ for the Jewish people.” Go on, I
said. “It seems she was driven by a literal interpretation of
Paul’s letter to the Romans.”
Rosamunde directed me to the relevant lines of the
famous epistle, lines for which it became apparent my
mother—and by extension I—were indebted. Together we
read Romans 1:16: “For I am not ashamed of the Good
News of Christ, for it is the power of God for salvation for
everyone who believes; for the Jew first, and also for the
Greek.”
She directed me to another line, Romans 10:1: “Brothers,
my heart’s desire and prayer to God is for Israel, that they
may be saved.”
Rosamunde believed these were the lines that caused
Miss Tilney to see her mission as working with Jewish
people “to win them for Christ.” I understood the hesitation
in raising this, that I might be offended by the thought that
Miss Tilney was motivated by religious ideology. She had no
reason to be concerned.
Tom Chapman endorsed the detective work. He believed
Miss Tilney was motivated by human compassion, coupled
with a strong belief—shared by others at the Surrey Chapel
—in the epithet “For the Jew first.” His predecessor David
Panton adopted a literal interpretation of Romans that
pointed to a deep sympathy for Jews and their crucial role
in fulfilling God’s purposes. Tom thought it to be the very
opposite of the Nazi credo.
“What Paul is saying,” Tom explained, “is that you show
your faith to God as a Christian by expressing sympathy
and kindness to the Jewish people.”
Had Miss Tilney traveled to Vienna in the hope that the
infant would become a Christian? The question was
awkward. “She had an exultation of the Jewish people, a
general desire to do good to those who were struggling,”
Tom continued, “and this was coupled with a theological
position that heightened sensitivities.” A mix of compassion
and theology, then?
Yes, but the basic motivation was compassion, tweaked
by a theological element. “She was aware of the
persecution of Jews in Germany and Austria, and her
position was the very antithesis of the anti-Semitism
dominant in Germany.”
I knew Paul’s letter to the Romans to be controversial,
not least because it dealt with matters such as
homosexuality and the rights of women in church. I knew it
also to be significant, in the sense of prophesying that
Christ would not come again until the Jews had been
converted, that the Second Coming wouldn’t happen until
all Jews accepted the same God. This posed a challenge for
Miss Tilney, whose Christian doctrine directed that
salvation was a one-to-one business, that each Jew had to
decide on his own, as an individual act. The one, not the
many. So Miss Tilney had much work on her hands, a
consequence of the split between Martin Luther and the
Catholic Church during the Reformation. This focused on
an interpretation of the Scriptures that pointed to
individual conscience, the negation of the group.
“This was the beginning of our idea of the individual in
the modern world,” a theologically inclined acquaintance
explained, the origins of modern human rights, the focus on
the individual.
—
Like Tom Chapman, I understood Miss Tilney to have been
motivated by something beyond ideology. Her writings, the
decision to move to Paris, the fact she spoke Arabic and
French, all pointed to something more. In writing about her
visit to the mosque, she noticed its beauty and the
loveliness of particular individuals. She was ideological and
certain about the things she believed, but those matters
didn’t blind her to the nuances and variety of life, to the
individuals who didn’t think the way she did, and she
wanted to spend time with them.
Miss Tilney was a compassionate woman, not an
ideologue out to do the missionary thing. It wasn’t only that
she hid people but that she went out of her way to hide
people. “People are only capable of great heroism when
they believe something passionately,” a friend suggested,
when I told her the story. “An abstract principle is not
enough to be heroic; it has to be something which is
emotional and deeply motivated.”
PART IV
Lemkin
[A]ttacks upon national, religious and ethnic
groups should be made international crimes.
—RAFAEL LEMKIN, 1944
Credit p4.1
57
ON A WARM SPRING DAY in New York City, Nancy Lavinia
Ackerly, a student from Louisville, Kentucky, sat on the
grass of Riverside Park close to the campus of Columbia
University. It was 1959, and Nancy was with an Indian
friend, enjoying a modest picnic. As an elderly man ambled
over to them, dressed elegantly in a suit and tie, Nancy
noticed his warm eyes. In a heavy central European accent,
he said, “I know the words for ‘I love you’ in twenty
languages, may I share them with you?”
Please do, Nancy said, please do. He joined them, and
over the course of a meandering conversation Nancy
learned that he was the author of the Genocide Convention.
His name was Rafael Lemkin, and he came originally from
Poland.
Nancy and Lemkin became acquaintances. She would
visit him on West 112th Street, a space filled with books
and papers, a single room with a day-bed but no telephone
or water closet. He was destitute and ill, but Nancy didn’t
know this. A few months into their friendship, he inquired
whether she might assist on his memoir: Would she be
willing to help “smooth out the language”? Over the
summer, they worked together on the manuscript, to which
Lemkin gave the title Totally Unofficial.
Because he was unable to find a publisher, the book
ended up several dozen blocks south of Columbia
University, in the bowels of the New York Public Library.
Many, many years later, a generous American academic
mentioned the manuscript and sent me a photocopy. It
reached me in London, where I read it with care and much
interest. The gaps were immediately apparent, and I
enjoyed a typewritten text heavily marked up by Lemkin’s
hand. One passage was particularly enticing, no more than
a few lines about Lemkin’s studies in Lwów, which captured
a conversation with an unnamed professor (some versions
of the text referred to more than one professor), no doubt
written with the benefit of lengthy hindsight. Still, the
passage captured my attention and eventually led me to
learn that Lemkin and Lauterpacht had had the same
teachers at the same Law School.
58
“I WAS BORN…[and] lived my first ten years on a farm called
Ozerisko, fourteen miles from the city of Wołkowysk,”
Lemkin wrote in the memoir. Life began in the clearing of a
forest in June 1900, not far from Białystok. This was several
hundred miles north of Lemberg, on land that Russia had
annexed from Poland a century earlier, in 1795. The
territory was known as White Rus, or Litva. East Prussia
lay to the north, modern Ukraine to the south, Russia to the
east, and modern Poland to the west. Ozerisko, which is
now Azyaryska in Belarus, was so small that it was more or
less unmarked.
This was the birthplace of Lemkin, the second of Bella
and Josef’s three sons, tucked between Elias and Samuel.
His father worked as a tenant farmer in lands over which
Poles and Russians had long fought, with the Jews caught
in the middle. Life was a constant struggle, as his father
put it, like three in a bed sharing a single blanket. “When
the man to the right pulls the blanket to himself,” only the
one in the middle could be sure of being covered.
The Lemkins lived with two other families, and the
children formed a “happy gang.” Lemkin recalled an idyllic
childhood, of roosters and other animals, a large dog called
Riabczyk, a great white horse, the “metallic whisper” of
swinging scythes cutting through fields of clover and rye.
Food was plentiful, black bread, raw onions, potato
pudding. He helped out on the farm, near a large lake
sheltered by white birches on which he and his brothers
built small barges and played pirates and Vikings.
Occasionally, the idyll was interrupted by a tsarist official,
who came to enforce the rules that precluded Jews from
owning a farm. Josef Lemkin circumvented the law with
bribes, paid to a mustachioed police officer in uniform and
shiny black boots who sat astride a large horse. He was the
first official to be feared by Lemkin.
Bible study began at the age of six, introducing Lemkin to
prophets who preached justice among men and peace
among nations. He graduated to lessons in a neighboring
village, where his grandparents ran a boardinghouse, and
from his mother, Bella, who was a voracious reader, he first
heard the fables of Ivan Krylov, tales of justice and
disappointment. To the end of his life, he would recite the
story of the fox who invited the stork to lunch, offering food
on a flat plate. The stork reciprocated, with an invitation to
eat from a bottle, with a narrow neck. Injustice didn’t pay,
such was the lesson of a childhood fable.
Bella often sang to him, simple melodies that might be
built around the poems of Semyon Nadson, a nineteenthcentury Russian romantic writer, whose poem-song “The
Triumph of Love” repudiated violence. “Look how evil
oppresses mankind,” Nadson wrote of the world, so “sick of
torture and blood.” Nadson’s writings later inspired Sergei
Rachmaninoff, who, in the year of Lemkin’s birth, drew on
another poem (“Melodiya”) to craft op. 21, no. 9, a
romantic piece for piano and tenor that expressed hope for
the possibility of a better humankind.
At my instigation, a colleague from Belarus traveled to
Azyaryska, three hours by car from Minsk, to take a look.
There he found a group of wooden houses, each occupied
by an elderly widow. One of them, in her eighty-fifth year,
told him with a smile that she was too young to remember
Lemkin. She directed him to an abandoned Jewish
cemetery. That might be helpful, she said.
Credit 58.1
Azyaryska, Belarus, 2012
Close to the hamlet, my friend came across the village of
Mižeryčy, home to a noble Belarusan family, the Skirmurts,
famous in an earlier age for their collection of French and
Polish books. “Maybe that is why Lemkin’s mother spoke so
many languages,” my friend suggested.
The years were not pure idyll. Lemkin heard of pogroms
and mob violence against Jews. In Białystok in 1906, when
Lemkin was six years old, a hundred Jews were killed in
one incident. He imagined stomachs split apart and stuffed
with pillow feathers, although it seems more likely that the
impressions were drawn from a poem by Bialik, In the City
of Slaughter, which offered a graphic account of a different
atrocity a thousand miles south, with a line about “cloven
belly, feather-filled.” Lemkin knew the works of Bialik, and
his first published book (in 1926) would be a translation
from Hebrew into Polish of a novella by the poet, a book
called Noach i Marynka. I tracked down a copy in the
university library in Jerusalem, a tale of young love, a
Jewish boy and a Ukrainian girl (the English title is Behind
the Fence), a story of conflict between groups.
In 1910, the Lemkins left Ozerisko for another farm in
nearby Wołkowysk. The move was prompted by a desire to
improve the children’s education, to enable Lemkin to
enroll in a city school. There he became an admirer of
Tolstoy (to “believe an idea means to live it,” he liked to
say) and of Quo Vadis, a historical novel by Henryk
Sienkiewicz, about love and ancient Rome. He told Nancy
Ackerly that he was eleven when he read the novel, which
caused him to ask his mother why the police hadn’t
intervened when the Romans threw the Christians to the
lions. Lemkin touched on analogous matters in his memoir
—for example, an account of a Jewish “ritual killing” that
was claimed to have taken place in Kiev in 1911—events
that caused him and other Jewish pupils at the school to be
taunted because of their religious affiliation.
59
IN 1915, World War I reached Wołkowysk. In his memoir,
which was both incomplete and, I came to believe, not
entirely free from a touch of creative embellishment,
Lemkin wrote that the Germans damaged the family farm
on arrival, then again in 1918 when they left, although
Bella’s books were left intact. A good student with a
phenomenal facility for languages, he attended a
gymnasium in Białystok. With the end of the war,
Wołkowysk became part of Poland, and Lemkin, like
Lauterpacht and Leon, acquired Polish nationality.
Credit 59.1
Lemkin, Białystok, 1917
The end of World War I brought a different tragedy to the
Lemkin family. In July 1918, the global influenza pandemic
reached Wołkowysk, and among the many victims was
Lemkin’s younger brother, Samuel.
It was around this time, when he was eighteen years old,
that Lemkin said he began to think about the destruction of
groups. One point of focus was the mass murder of
Armenians in the summer of 1915, which was in the news.
“More than 1.2 million Armenians” killed, as he put it, “for
no other reason than they were Christians.” Henry
Morgenthau, the American ambassador to the Ottoman
Empire who would prepare a report on the Lwów killings of
1918, described the Armenian massacres as “the greatest
crime of all ages.” For the Russians, they were “crimes
against Christianity and civilization,” a formulation that the
French used but changed to a “crime against humanity and
civilization,” concerned about Muslim sensitivities. “A
nation was killed and the guilty persons set free,” Lemkin
wrote, identifying the “most frightful” perpetrator as Talaat
Pasha, an Ottoman minister.
60
LEMKIN’S ACCOUNT SKIPPED lightly over the period that
followed the end of World War I. There was a passing
mention of studies in Lwów, and various biographical
sketches written by others suggested he studied philology,
but they offered no detail. I returned to the archives in Lviv
with the help of Ivan and Ihor, my two Ukrainian assistants,
to see what might be found, but we left empty-handed.
Could the accounts of Lemkin’s life have been wrong? Was
he a fantasist? Over a full summer, we drew a blank, until I
chanced across a reference in a university yearbook that
mentioned a doctoral degree in law being bestowed on him
in the summer of 1926. It offered the name of a supervisor,
Professor Dr. Juliusz Makarewicz, the man who taught
criminal law to Lauterpacht. This was curious, remarkable
even: the two men who brought genocide and crimes
against humanity into the Nuremberg trial and
international law happened to share a common teacher.
We returned to the city archive to search again. Ivan
systematically examined every single volume that related to
students at the law faculty from 1918 to 1928, a
painstaking task. On an autumn day, Ivan led me to a table
loaded with piles of books, thirty-two bound volumes, each
containing hundreds of pages of student records.
In search of Lemkin, we worked our way through
thousands of pages. Many volumes hadn’t been opened for
years; others bore the mark of a recent researcher, a tiny
shred of paper inserted as a place marker. After several
hours, we reached volume 207, the decanal catalog for the
academic year 1923–24, H to M. Ivan turned a page and
yelped; he had a signature, “R. Lemkin.”
The confident black scribble confirmed the studies in
Lwów. Ivan and I hugged; an elderly lady in a pink blouse
smiled. He signed in 1923, writing out the date and place of
birth (June 24, 1900, Bezwodne), the names of his parents
(Josef and Bella), their hometown (Wołkowysk), an address
in Lwów, and a complete list of courses taken that
academic year.
We soon gathered a complete academic record, from
enrollment in October 1921 to graduation in 1926. A 1924
document—the Absolutorjum—listed all the courses he
took, and a 1926 Protokol egzaminu (certificate of
examination) confirmed the award of a doctoral degree in
law on May 20. The documents included other new
information: a high school diploma obtained from the
Białystok Gymnasium on June 30, 1919; enrollment three
months later at the law faculty of the Jagiellonian
University in Kraków; arrival at the law faculty in Lwów on
October 12, 1921.
Yet a whole year was missing from his life, from the
summer of 1920 onward. Lemkin made no mention of
Kraków in his memoir or, apparently, anywhere else. There
he studied legal history and various Polish subjects but not
criminal law or international law. One Polish scholar
claimed that he fought as a soldier in the Polish-Soviet war,
and Lemkin himself once suggested he was wounded in
1920, as Marshal Piłsudski pushed Bolshevik forces out of
eastern Poland. Yet of such matters his memoir was silent.
Professor Marek Kornat, a Polish historian, told me that
Lemkin was expelled from the Kraków university when it
emerged that his account of service in the Polish military in
1919 was inaccurate (he only served as a volunteer
assistant to a military judge). Confronted by this fact, the
Kraków university authorities expelled him (a “very
conservative place” compared with liberal Lwów, Professor
Kornat suggested).
61
“IN LWÓW,” Lemkin wrote in his memoir, “I enrolled for the
study of law.” He offered few details, but armed with the
newly discovered university records, I was able to learn
about the courses he took and the addresses where he
lived.
He spent five years at Lwów University, from 1921 to
1926, arriving two years after Lauterpacht left. Over eight
semesters, he took forty-five courses, starting in September
1921, with courses on such diverse matters as church law,
the Polish judiciary, and Roman law, the classes being
taught by many of the men who taught Lauterpacht. That
first year he lived on the western side of the city, at 6
Stebona Street (now Hlyboka Street), as Poland was
emerging from a long war with Russia, eventually settled
by the drawing of a new boundary. Located some 150 miles
to the east of the original Curzon Line, on which
Lauterpacht had worked in 1919, this new boundary
brought four million Ukrainians under Polish control.
The four-story building in which Lemkin lived had ornate
features, with a stone-carved young woman above its
entrance and flowers sweetly carved above each window, a
mirror to the busy flower market that occupied the derelict
space opposite when I visited. It was near the Lemberg
Polytechnic, whose president, Dr. Fiedler, had in 1919
shared a walk to the top of Vysoky Zamok (also known as
the Castle Hill) with Arthur Goodhart, a young lawyer
working for President Woodrow Wilson, to warn of troubles
ahead.
The following year, Lemkin studied Polish criminal law
with Professor Dr. Juliusz Makarewicz, who had reinvented
himself after teaching Austrian criminal law to
Lauterpacht.
Other
courses
covered
international
commercial law (with Professor Allerhand) and property
law (with Professor Longchamps de Bérier), two teachers
whose lives would be cut short after the arrival of the
Germans in 1941. That year he lived at 44 Grodecka Street
(now Horodotska Street), an imposing Palladian building on
a major road leading to the opera house, under the long
shadow cast by St. George’s Cathedral. This was but a
short distance from the house where my grandfather Leon
was born, on Szeptyckich Street.
Lemkin’s third year, from the autumn of 1923, was
devoted to criminal law, with two more courses taught by
Professor Makarewicz. He also took a first course on
international law, taught by Ludwik Ehrlich, the man who
held the chair that Lauterpacht had unsuccessfully applied
for. Lemkin had by now moved again, to a poorer workingclass neighborhood on the wrong side of the rail tracks,
reached by passing under the arch of a bridge that would
serve, two decades later, as the gateway to the Jewish
ghetto
in
German-occupied
Lemberg.
Today
21
Zamarstynowska Street (now Zamarstynivs’ka Street) has a
dark and gloomy feel to it, a tenement in need of care and
attention.
21 Zamarstynivs’ka, Lviv 2013
Each new home seemed less grand than the previous one,
as though Lemkin were on a downward trajectory.
62
IN HIS MEMOIR, Lemkin made no mention of any of these
places or of his life in Lwów. What he did mention was a
“picturesque and most sensational” trial held in Berlin in
June 1921, three months before he started his studies. The
defendant was a young Armenian, Soghomon Tehlirian,
who had assassinated a former Ottoman government
minister called Talaat Pasha in the German capital. The
trial was conducted in a packed courtroom (a young
German law student called Robert Kempner sat in the
public gallery, a man who would help Lemkin a quarter of a
century later in Nuremberg). It was presided over by the
aptly named judge Dr. Erich Lehmberg. Tehlirian, an
“undersized, swarthily pale faced” student who was partial
to dance lessons and the mandolin, argued that he had
killed Talaat Pasha to avenge the murder of his family and
the Armenians of Erzurum, his hometown.
Tehlirian’s defense lawyer played a group identity card,
arguing that the defendant was merely an avenger of the
“large and patient” family of Armenians. His star witness
was Johannes Lepsius, a sixty-two-year-old German
Protestant missionary who implicated the Turk in the
massacre of Armenians in 1915. Judge Lehmberg directed
the members of the jury to free Tehlirian if they thought
he’d acted without free will, because of an “inner turmoil.”
The jury took less than an hour to reach a “not guilty”
verdict, a finding that provoked much commotion.
The trial was very widely reported in the press and
became a subject of classroom debate.
“I discussed this matter with my professors,” Lemkin
wrote in his memoir. He offered no clue as to the
professors’ identities but expressed concern about the
fairness of rules that allowed Turkey to mistreat so many of
its Armenian citizens with impunity. Lemkin doubted that
Tehlirian should have acted as a “self-appointed legal
officer for the conscience of mankind,” seeking to uphold
global moral order. What bothered him more, however, was
the idea that the murder of innocent Armenians should go
unpunished.
In later years, he frequently evoked the conversations
with the professors. Tehlirian did the right thing, Lemkin
told the teachers. What about sovereignty, one of the
unnamed professors asked, the state’s right to treat its
citizens as it wished? Strictly speaking, the professor was
correct: international law allowed a state to do what it
wished back then. Amazingly, there was no treaty to
prevent Turkey from acting as it had, from killing its own
citizens. Sovereignty meant sovereignty, total and absolute.
Sovereignty was intended for other things, Lemkin
retorted, like foreign policy, or building schools and roads,
or providing for the welfare of people. It wasn’t meant to
allow a state the “right to kill millions of innocent people.”
If it did, the world needed a law against such behavior. On
Lemkin’s account of an exchange with one professor, which
could not be verified, the argument escalated into a grand
epiphanic moment.
“Did the Armenians ever try to have the Turk arrested for
the massacre?”
“There wasn’t any law under which he could be
arrested,” the professor replied.
“Not even though he had a part in killing so many
people?” Lemkin countered.
“Let us take the case of a man who owns some chickens,”
the professor retorted. “He kills them. Why not? It is not
your business. If you interfere, it is trespass.”
“The Armenians were not chickens,” Lemkin said sharply.
The professor allowed the youthful comment to pass,
then changed tack. “When you interfere with the internal
affairs of a country, you infringe upon that country’s
sovereignty.”
“So it’s a crime for Tehlirian to strike down one man, but
not a crime for that man to have struck down one million
men?” Lemkin asked.
The professor shrugged. Lemkin was “young and
excited.” “If you knew something about international
law…”
Was the account accurate? Lemkin returned to the
exchange throughout his life, explaining that the Tehlirian
trial changed his life. Bob Silvers, editor of The New York
Review of Books, remembers hearing the same tale in a
class taught by Lemkin at Yale Law School in 1949
(Silvers’s memory of his teacher was of a “lonely, driven,
complicated, emotional, isolated, effusive” man, someone
who was not exactly charming but “tried to charm people”).
Lemkin mentioned the story to a playwright, to diplomats,
to journalists. I was curious about the identity of the
unnamed professor with whom the specific conversation
took place. There was one obvious clue: in so formal a
setting as a classroom, he must have known the professor
well enough to feel able to challenge him.
63
I TURNED TO Professor Roman Shust, dean of the history
faculty at Lviv University, a man who was said to know
“everything” about the institution’s past. We met on the
same day that the European Court of Human Rights
revisited the issue that so exercised Lemkin, ruling that
Turkey could not criminalize references to the Armenian
killings as a “genocide,” a word that had not been invented
when the killings occurred in 1915.
Dean Shust occupied a small office in the old AustroHungarian parliament building, now part of the university.
A large man with ample gray hair and a friendly, inviting
smile, he sprawled across a chair, apparently amused that a
distant London academic might be interested in old stories
about his city. He’d heard of Lemkin but not Lauterpacht
and expressed much interest in the archival material Ivan
and I had uncovered.
“Did you know that when the Nazis were here in 1941
they went through the student files to find the Jews?” Dean
Shust mused. He pointed to the line in a form where
Lemkin wrote “Mosaic” to identify his nationality. Students
came to the archives to get rid of their papers; so did the
teachers, like Professor Allerhand, who taught both men.
“Do you know what happened to Professor Allerhand?”
the dean asked. I nodded.
“Murdered in the Janowska camp,” he continued, right
here, at the center of this town. “A German police officer
was killing a Jewish man,” he continued. “Professor
Allerhand wanted to get his attention, so he went up to him
and asked a simple question: ‘Have you no soul?’ The
officer turned to Allerhand, took out his gun, and shot him
dead. The account was given in the memoir of another
prisoner.”
He sighed.
“We will try to help you find the professor who spoke with
Lemkin.” He went on to explain that professors held a
range of political views in the 1920s, as they did today.
“Some never accepted Jewish or Ukrainian students in
their classes; others made the Jewish people sit at the back
of the teaching rooms.” Dean Shust peered at Lemkin’s
forms. “Poor grades,” he exclaimed, probably due to his
“nationality,” which would have engendered a “negative
attitude” from some professors, likely supporters of the
National Democratic Party. He explained that the party’s
leader, Roman Dmowski, was an arch-nationalist with
“ambivalent” feelings toward minorities. I recalled Henry
Morgenthau’s conversation with Dmowski in Lwów in
August 1919. Poland is for the Poles alone, the American
diplomat recorded Dmowski as saying, along with an
explanation that his “anti-Semitism isn’t religious: it is
political.” Dmowski claimed to feel no prejudice, political or
otherwise, toward any Jew who wasn’t Polish.
The dean brought the conversation back to the events of
November 1918, the Jewish “eliminations,” as he referred
to them. Students were exposed to the “negative views” of
some professors, mainly the younger ones, less tolerant
than professors from the Austrian era. “When Lemkin was
here, Lwów was a multilingual and multicultural society, a
third of the population of the city were Jews.” Remember
this, the dean said, always.
Together we admired a photograph of the Lemberg
professors, taken in 1912.
The dean homed in on Juliusz Makarewicz, in the middle
of the group, the longest beard. It was likely he was the
unnamed professor quoted at length by Lemkin, the dean
said, because he taught criminal law to Lauterpacht and
Lemkin. The dean made a quick telephone call, and a few
minutes later a colleague entered the room. Zoya Baran, an
associate professor, was the resident expert on
Makarewicz. Elegant, authoritative, interested, she
summarized a long article she had recently written on
Makarewicz in Ukrainian.
Credit 63.1
Faculty of Law, Lemberg, 1912; Juliusz Makarewicz, bearded, is in the
middle, one up from the bottom row
—
She couldn’t say “for certain” that Makarewicz was the
unnamed professor, Professor Baran explained, but it was
“likely.” “Makarewicz was born Jewish, then baptized a
Catholic. He published works on national minorities, and
these became the ideological platform for the political
party he supported, the Polish Christian Democratic Party,
known as Chadecja.”
What were his views on minorities, the Jews and the
Ukrainians?
“National minorities who never intended to rule the
country were tolerated,” she said bluntly. “The Slavonic
minority? Hated. The Jews? Emigration.” She waved a hand
in the air dismissively.
Makarewicz
believed
national
minorities
to
be
“dangerous,” she continued, especially when they were the
“biggest part” of the population in a specific region, and all
the more so “when they lived on the borders of the state.”
Lwów was treated as a border city, so Makarewicz would
have considered Jews and Ukrainians in Lwów to pose a
particular “danger” to newly independent Poland. She
offered another thought: Makarewicz “had right-wing
politics”; he detested the 1919 Polish Minorities Treaty
because it discriminated against Poles. Minorities could
complain to the League of Nations if their rights were
violated, but Poles couldn’t.
—
Makarewicz was a nationalist and a survivor. In 1945, the
KGB arrested him and banished him to Siberia. Freed
following the intervention of a group of Polish professors,
he returned to Soviet-controlled Lvov to continue teaching
at the law faculty. He died in 1955.
“Would you like to see the classrooms where Lauterpacht
and Lemkin studied?” the dean inquired. Yes, I replied, very
much.
64
THE NEXT MORNING, I met Zoya on Prospekt Shevchenka, in
the shadow of the monument to Mykhailo Hrushevsky,
Ukraine’s most distinguished twentieth-century historian.
We stood close to the building that once housed the
Scottish Café, where scholars met in the 1930s to solve
obscure and complicated mathematical problems. She was
accompanied by a doctoral student called Roman, who had
found a list of all the courses taught by Professor
Makarewicz between 1915 and 1923, in room N13 at the
old law faculty building, at 4 Hrushevskoho Street
(formerly Southwest Mykolaja Street). A short walk away, it
was an imposing three-story, nineteenth-century AustroHungarian building with a two-tone exterior—creamy
ground floor, ocher upper floors. On the outside wall, a few
plaques record the luminaries who passed through its
doors, without mention of Lauterpacht or Lemkin, or any
lawyers.
The dark interior was lit by glass globes that hung from
the ceiling, with enough light to illuminate the dilapidated
classrooms and paint that cracked and peeled along the
walls. It wasn’t hard to imagine law students taking refuge
from the cold and the conflict on the streets in this temple
of order and rules. Now it housed the faculty of biology,
whose dean welcomed us and accompanied us to the
zoological museum housed on an upper floor. This
remarkable collection dated back to the Austro-Hungarian
period, five rooms packed with deathly artifacts. Butterflies
and moths, then fish, including the fearsome Lophius
piscatorius, the vicious-toothed frog-fish otherwise known
as the angler. A troop of lizards and reptiles, followed by
mammal skeletons, mighty and small. A stuffed pelican
gazed out of the window over the city, improbable monkeys
clambered the walls, birds of every possible hue and color,
shape and size, hung from ceilings and perched in glass
coffins. Thousands of eggs, meticulously arranged
according to genus, size, and geography. An eagle
swooped, observed by pure white owls. We admired
Schlegelia wilsonii, a bird of paradise caught in Papua New
Guinea, a nineteenth-century creature of exquisite beauty
and color.
Former Law Faculty building, 4 Hrushevskoho Street (2012)
Schlegelia wilsonii, Department of Biology, Lviv (2011)
“The Austrians were inspired by these birds in the design
of their hats,” the director explained. A small black-andyellow-feathered bird bore two spiral feathers on its head.
One twirled left, the other right. In such an incongruous
place, it offered a stark reminder that Lviv had no museum
dedicated to its former residents, the groups that had long
gone, the Poles and Jews and Armenians. What it did have
was a superb zoological collection, a reminder of the hats
worn by the disappeared.
Our next stop was the classroom in which the famed
Ukrainian writer Ivan Franko studied, preserved as it was
at the beginning of the twentieth century. Franko was a
Ukrainian writer and political activist who died in Lemberg
in 1916 in abject poverty. There was now a large statue of
him, across the street from Dean Shust’s office, and this
dedicated classroom. We knocked and entered. Students
looked up, a class interrupted, seated as Lauterpacht and
Lemkin might have been, on wooden rows in a room
overlooking an internal courtyard. Bright sunlight shot
across the room, cutting through the light of eight brass
lanterns that hung from the ceiling. The room was elegant
and simple, bright and airy, a place of learning, of calm and
order, of structure and hierarchy.
In a room like this, if not this very one, Lauterpacht and
Lemkin learned about the law. In the autumn of 1918, in
this building, Makarewicz gave his last lecture on the
criminal law of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In November,
as violence engulfed the city, Lauterpacht left the
barricades to sit in such a classroom, and that month power
shifted on a weekly basis, from the Austro-Hungarians to
the Poles, then to the Ukrainians, then back to the Poles. As
the city changed hands, Professor Makarewicz carried on
teaching the criminal law of an empire that had ceased to
exist.
By the time Lemkin sat on the same wooden bench four
years later, Makarewicz was teaching Polish criminal law.
The hour might have changed—Lauterpacht’s class with
Makarewicz was at ten in the morning, Lemkin’s at five in
the afternoon—but room N13 was a constant. A bit like
Count Morstin, the old Galician governor in Joseph Roth’s
novella The Bust of the Emperor, who performs a daily
ritual before a stone bust of the emperor Franz Joseph
years after his death. “My old home, the Monarchy, alone,
was a great mansion,” Morstin mused, but now the
mansion was “divided, split up, splintered.”
As control of the city passed from one group to another,
Makarewicz plowed on. The country changed, the
government changed, the students changed, the laws
changed, yet room N13 remained. In later years too, in the
time of Soviet laws, then the German decrees of Hans
Frank, then more Soviet laws, Makarewicz adjusted his
courses to take account of new realities. After each class,
the great survivor left the law faculty, walked up
Drahomanova Street, past the university library, trundling
up the hill to the house he built for himself, at No. 58.
There he could enter his home and shut out the world.
65
LEMKIN GRADUATED from the university in 1926. Around then,
he completed the translation of Bialik’s novella and a book
on Russian and Soviet criminal law, for which Juliusz
Makarewicz contributed the preface. The times were harsh,
economically and politically, as Marshal Piłsudski led a
coup that toppled an elected government. Lemkin believed
the
alternative—Dmowski’s
anti-Semitic
National
Democrats—would have been even worse.
Two weeks after the coup, another political murder
caught Lemkin’s attention. This time it was closer to home,
because the victim was the anti-Bolshevist president of the
short-lived 1918 West Ukrainian People’s Republic, General
Symon Petliura, shot dead on the rue Racine in Paris.
Worse still, the assassin was Samuel Schwartzbard, a
Jewish watchmaker who wanted to avenge the murder of
Jews
in
Russia,
allegedly
on
Petliura’s
orders.
Schwartzbard’s trial offered another media sensation, six
years after the Tehlirian affair, to be closely observed by
Lemkin. The witnesses included famed writers, Israel
Zangwill for the prosecution and Maxim Gorky for the
defense, but the star turn was a nurse with the Ukrainian
Red Cross. Haia Greenberg claimed to have witnessed a
pogrom in February 1919 and testified that Petliura’s
soldiers killed as a military band played.
The jury deliberated for less than an hour, then declared
Schwartzbard “not guilty,” because his actions weren’t
premeditated. The New York Times reported that four
hundred spectators squeezed into the Paris courtroom
—“white-bearded Jews from Central and Eastern Europe,”
“flappers with bobbed hair,” and “Slavic featured
Ukrainians”—received the verdict with “cheers for France.”
Lemkin was satisfied. “They could neither acquit
Schwarzbard [sic] nor condemn him,” he wrote, unable to
punish an avenger of the deaths of “hundreds of thousands
of his innocent brethren, including his parents.” Equally,
the court would not sanction “the taking of the law in one’s
hands in order to uphold the moral standards of mankind.”
In Lemkin’s view, the ingenious conclusion was to declare
Schwartzbard insane, then set him free.
Lemkin observed the trial from Warsaw, where he worked
as a secretary at the court of appeals, after stints as a court
clerk and public prosecutor in Brzezany, sixty miles east of
Lwów. Under the patronage of Professor Makarewicz, the
two trials catalyzed his thinking. “Gradually, but surely,” he
explained, a decision was “maturing” in him to do
something to develop new international rules to protect
groups. His “judicial career” at the Warsaw courts offered a
platform, along with the numerous books written to
develop a “following and influence.” Scholarship was a
platform for advocacy.
By the time Hitler took power, Lemkin had six years
under his belt as a public prosecutor. The farm boy from
Wołkowysk was established and connected to Poland’s top
lawyers, politicians, and judges. He published books on the
Soviet criminal code, Italy’s fascist penal code, and
Poland’s revolutionary law on amnesties, usually more
descriptive than analytical. He found a new mentor, Emil
Stanisław Rappaport, judge on the Supreme Court of
Poland and founder of the Free Polish University in Warsaw,
where Lemkin taught.
On the side, he participated in efforts at the League of
Nations to develop the criminal law, attending conferences,
building up a network of contacts around Europe. In the
spring of 1933, anticipating a meeting to be held in Madrid
in October, he wrote a pamphlet proposing new
international rules to prohibit “barbarity” and “vandalism.”
These were more necessary than ever, he believed, as
attacks on Jews and other minorities multiplied in the
shadow of Hitler. He feared Mein Kampf as a “blue-print for
destruction,” implemented by the new Enabling Law
adopted by a supine Reichstag to give Hitler dictatorial
powers.
Lemkin, a practical idealist, believed that proper criminal
laws could actually prevent atrocity. In his view, the
minorities treaties were inadequate, so he imagined new
rules to protect “the life of the peoples”: to prevent
“barbarity,” the destruction of groups, and to prevent
“vandalism,” attacks on culture and heritage. The ideas
weren’t entirely original, drawing on the views of Vespasian
V. Pella, a Romanian scholar who promoted the idea of
“universal jurisdiction,” a principle that national courts
around the world should be able to try perpetrators of the
most serious crimes. (Six decades later, “universal
jurisdiction” for the crime of torture ensnared Senator
Pinochet in the English courts.) Lemkin didn’t cite Pella’s
earlier work on “acts of barbarism or vandalism capable of
bringing about a common danger,” although he gave the
Romanian credit for the list of crimes to which “universal
jurisdiction” would apply (such as piracy, slavery, trading in
women and children, and drug trafficking). Lemkin’s
pamphlet was published by Pedone, a publishing house on
the rue Soufflot in Paris, official publisher to the League of
Nations.
Lemkin expected to be a member of the Polish delegation
at the Madrid conference, but as he prepared to travel,
Emil Rappaport called to alert him to a problem. The
minister of justice opposes you going, the judge told him, a
consequence of efforts by the Gazeta Warszawska, the daily
paper associated with Dmowski’s National Democratic
Party. Lemkin didn’t travel to Madrid but hoped his
pamphlet would be discussed, that it might create “a
movement of ideas.” The formal record of the meeting
recorded that the paper was circulated but offered no
evidence that it was discussed.
A few days after the conference ended, as Germany
announced its departure from the League of Nations, the
Gazeta Warszawska attacked “Prosecutor Lemkin”
personally. “It is not difficult to guess at the motives that
induced Mr. Lemkin to present this project,” the paper
complained on October 25, “considering that he belongs to
the ‘racial group’ most endangered by the ‘barbarism’ and
‘vandalism’ practiced by some nations.” The paper reported
it to be a “doubtful honor” for Poland that one of its
representatives, Mr. Lemkin, was the “author of this kind of
project.”
Within a year, Poland signed a nonaggression pact with
Germany and denounced the 1919 Minorities Treaty. The
foreign minister, Beck, told the League of Nations that
Poland hadn’t turned against minorities but wanted
equality with other countries: if they weren’t required to
protect their minorities, Poland shouldn’t be required to do
so either. As The New York Times reported a “drift towards
the Reich,” Lemkin left his job as a public prosecutor.
66
MOVING INTO private practice as a commercial lawyer,
Lemkin took an office on Jerozolimskie (Jerusalem) Avenue
in Warsaw. He was successful enough to buy a small house
in the country, build up an art collection, and move to an
apartment in a modernist block at 6 Kredytowa Street,
closer to the city center. From here, he ran his law office.
(In 2008, when a plaque was placed there to celebrate the
“outstanding Polish jurist and scholar of international
repute,” the building housed an office of the National
Rebirth of Poland party—Narodowe Odrodzenie Polski—a
minor neo-fascist political party.)
Lemkin tried to publish a book a year, honing his interest
in law reform and terrorism, a topical concern in the face of
numerous high-profile political killings (the 1934 murder of
King Alexander I of Yugoslavia, whose son Crown Prince
Peter would be tutored at Cambridge by Lauterpacht, was
the first to be captured on film). Lemkin’s connections
widened and included visitors from distant lands who
arrived with inducements. Professor Malcolm McDermott,
of Duke University in North Carolina, came to Warsaw to
translate one of Lemkin’s books into English, bringing an
offer of a teaching position at Duke. Lemkin declined,
because his mother wanted her son in Poland.
Bella was a frequent visitor to Warsaw, nursing her son
when he fell ill with double pneumonia in the summer of
1938. On returning to Wołkowysk, she shared stories with
her grandson Saul about Uncle Rafael’s apartment and its
fabulous modern elevator, Lemkin’s reputation with the
Warsaw intelligentsia, his impressive circle of friends.
Lemkin bent the ears of important men, she told the young
boy, with his campaign against “barbarity” and
“vandalism.” According to Saul, some listened, but his
uncle faced stiff opposition: his ideas belonged “to the
past,” he was told, and Hitler was only using hatred for
political purposes and didn’t really intend to destroy the
Jews. He should rein in his “fantastic predictions.”
In March 1938, Germany annexed Austria. Six months
later, as the British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain,
accepted Hitler’s demand that the Sudetenland be ceded to
Germany from Czechoslovakia, Lemkin traveled to London
for work. On Friday, September 23, he dined at the Reform
Club on Pall Mall with Herbert du Parcq, a court of appeals
judge, and they were joined by Lord Simon, the chancellor
of the Exchequer. Simon told them about Chamberlain’s
meeting with Hitler, explaining that the British negotiated
because they weren’t ready for war.
A week later, Chamberlain stood outside the famous
black door of 10 Downing Street after another rendezvous
with Hitler. “Peace for our time,” he declared, the people of
Britain could sleep quietly in their beds. Within a year,
Germany was at war with Poland. A million and a half
German Wehrmacht troops entered the country alongside
the SS and the Gestapo, as the Luftwaffe brought fear and
bombs to Warsaw, Kraków, and other Polish cities in the
east, including Lwów and Żółkiew. Lemkin remained in
Warsaw for five days, then left on September 6 as the
Germans approached the city.
He made his way toward Wołkowysk, northeast of Lwów,
in the swampy district of Polesie, when the skies fell silent.
Lemkin was caught between the Germans in the west and
the Soviets, who were now approaching from the east.
Poland’s independence was extinguished as the country
was carved in two by the pact between Stalin’s and Hitler’s
foreign ministers, Molotov and Ribbentrop. As Britain and
France entered the war, Lemkin continued northward; in
city clothes and glasses with expensive rims, he feared the
Soviets would identify him as a Polish intellectual and a
“big city dweller.” He was detained by a Russian soldier but
managed to talk himself out of harm.
In the province of Wolynia, he rested near the small town
of Dubno, taking refuge with the family of a Jewish baker.
Why would the Jews want to escape from the Nazis? the
baker asked. Lemkin told him about Mein Kampf and the
intention to destroy the Jews “like flies.” The baker scoffed;
he knew nothing of such a book, couldn’t believe the words
to be true.
“How can Hitler destroy the Jews, if he must trade with
them? People are needed to carry on a war.”
This wasn’t like other wars, Lemkin told him. It was a
war “to destroy whole peoples” and replace them with
Germans. The baker wasn’t persuaded. He lived under the
Germans for three years during World War I; not good, but
“somehow we survived.” The baker’s son, a boy in his
twenties with a bright face, enthusiastic and anxious,
disagreed. “I do not understand this attitude of my father
and of all the people like him in the town.”
Lemkin spent two weeks with the baker’s family. On
October 26, Hans Frank was appointed governor-general of
German-occupied Poland, to the west of a new boundary
line that left Żółkiew, Lwów, and Wołkowysk under Soviet
control. Stranded on the Soviet side, Lemkin took a train to
Wołkowysk packed with fearful travelers. The train arrived
during curfew, so Lemkin spent the night in the station
toilets to avoid arrest. Early in the morning, he walked to
his brother Elias’s house, at 15 Kosciuszko Street, avoiding
the main streets. He knocked quietly on the window, put his
lips to the glass, and whispered, “Rafael, Rafael.”
Bella expressed a joy that Lemkin wouldn’t forget. He
was put to bed, drifting off to sleep in a familiar old
blanket, worrying about the disaster that had befallen
Poland. He awoke to the smell of pancakes, devoured with
soured cream. Bella and Josef felt safe in Wołkowysk; they
didn’t want to leave with him. I’m retired, Josef explained,
not a capitalist. Elias was a mere employee; he gave up
ownership of the store, and the Soviets would leave them
alone. Only Lemkin would leave, to head for America,
where Josef’s brother Isidor lived.
Bella agreed he should go but had another concern. Why
wasn’t he married? This was a touchy subject. Years later,
Lemkin would tell Nancy Ackerly that he was so fully
absorbed in his work that he had “no time for married life,
or the funds to support it.” It was a striking feature of all
the material I found on Lemkin that none contained any
hint of an intimate relationship, although a number of
women seem to have expressed interest. Bella persisted,
telling her son that marriage was a means of protection,
that a “lonely and loveless” man would need a woman after
his mother’s support was “cut off.” Lemkin offered no
encouragement. A line from Goethe’s poem Hermann and
Dorothea entered his mind, as it always did when Bella
raised the subject: “Take a wife so that the night might
become the more beautiful part of your life.” I read the
poem, unable to discern any immediate clue that might
explain his solitary state or the poem’s relevance. He
responded to Bella’s effort with affection, placed his hands
on the back of her head, stroked her hair, kissed each eye,
yet offered no promise. “You are right.” That was all he
could muster, with the hope that the coming life of a nomad
might bring more fortune.
He left Wołkowysk in the evening. The moment of parting
lingered, a casual kiss, a meeting of eyes, silence, finality
denied.
67
PRESENT THAT AUTUMN DAY in Wołkowysk was Lemkin’s
nephew Saul. With some effort, I located him in Montreal,
living in a small apartment on the ground floor of a building
that had seen better days, in a district filled with
immigrants. His appearance was striking, the deep, sad
eyes hewn into an intelligent face, a straggling gray beard
redolent of a nineteenth-century Tolstoy character. Time
had not been generous to this gentle, literate man.
Well into his eighties, he sat on a cluttered sofa,
surrounded by books. He mourned the recent passing of his
lady friend, the subject he really wanted to talk about,
along with his ocular problems and the meaning of life with
a single kidney (the other was “lost in 1953,” the details
not offered). Yes, he remembered Uncle Rafael’s visit in the
autumn of 1939, when he was twelve, living on a street
“named after a famous Polish hero.” When Rafael left, they
knew they might not see each other again.
Until 1938, Saul and his parents lived in a house in
Wołkowysk with Bella and Josef. Then Lemkin bought the
parents a house of their own, for about five thousand zlotys
(approximately one thousand dollars). A lot of money back
then, Saul said. He must have been doing well as a lawyer.
His grandparents were “wonderful,” farmers from around
Wołkowysk. Bella was the more literary of the couple,
constantly reading, whereas Josef found interest in politics,
Yiddish newspapers, and the life of the synagogue. “Rafael
wasn’t a believer,” Saul said, without prompting.
His uncle visited twice a year, around the time of the
festivals. At Passover, Bella sent Saul to the busy store to
“stock up for Uncle’s visit.” The arrival of the “professor
and lawyer,” as he was reverentially referred to, was
always a big occasion, one that brought politics and “a little
friction” into the family home. On a previous visit, in April
1939, Lemkin turned up with a French newspaper, an
unusual item. Views were divided about an article on
Marshal Pétain being appointed ambassador to Madrid, as
a right-winger, to appease Franco. “My uncle didn’t like
Pétain or Franco.”
Saul thought Lemkin was “very well-known” in Poland.
Uncle lived in a grand building on a famous street—with a
fabulous elevator!—although Saul never visited Warsaw or
got to meet the “friends in high society.” I inquired about
his uncle’s romantic life, mentioning the account in
Lemkin’s memoir of a visit to Vilnius as a teenager and the
walk on a hillside with a girl in a brown school uniform.
Lemkin wanted to kiss her, but then the instinct was
“stifled in me by something that I could not understand,”
he wrote. The words were ambiguous.
“I don’t know why my uncle never married,” Saul said,
disinterestedly. “I suppose he had a chance, since he was
connected,” but there never was any talk of lady friends.
Saul vaguely remembered an event in Vienna, when
Edward VIII and Madame Simpson were present, but lady
friends? Saul knew nothing. “There was probably a woman
friend,” he added, but couldn’t remember any information.
“Exactly why he didn’t get married? I don’t know.”
The Soviets expropriated the family home but allowed the
family to remain. An officer moved in; Saul attended a
Russian-speaking school. “When my uncle came in October
1939, having escaped from Warsaw, we talked. The
Russians and the Germans joining together meant that it
was going to be very bad. This is what I heard, what I
remember him saying.”
There was a mournful air about Saul.
Did he have a photograph of Bella and Josef? “No.”
Of his uncle? “No.”
Any other member of the family from that period? “No,”
he said sadly. “There’s nothing left.”
68
LEMKIN TRAVELED by train from Wołkowysk to Vilnius, the city
of the near kiss, which was occupied by the Soviets. It
brimmed with Polish refugees and black-market goods,
visas, and passports, the “noodles” (dollars) that Lemkin
recognized as a symbol of freedom, America on his mind.
He met acquaintances from League of Nations days, among
them Bronisław Wróblewski, a distinguished criminologist.
I failed in my efforts on “barbarity” and “vandalism,” he
told Wróblewski, but “I will try again.”
Bella and Josef wrote of the happiness they felt to have
spent time with their son. The letter carried a familiar tone,
subdued optimism, anxieties barely concealed. There was
news too that Lemkin’s friend Benjamin Tomkiewicz was on
his way to Vilnius with a gift, a small cake with the smell of
Bella’s oven. Tomkiewicz’s deep pessimism offered a
counterpoint to Lemkin’s brighter disposition: the difficult
situation offered some opportunities and real challenges,
Lemkin thought, an end to the cushy life of Warsaw, with its
generous lawyer’s fees, fine furniture, and country house.
He had become too accustomed to a life of authority and
connections, with its “false prestige.” Such days were gone
but not mourned.
Lemkin wrote his way out of Vilnius. On October 25, he
applied for a temporary visa for Norway or Sweden. “I
managed to save my life by a miracle,” he explained in
French, and it was vital that he find a way out. “I will be
grateful for my whole life,” he added, emphasizing that all
he needed was a visa, “my financial situation is not bad”
(his return address was listed as the Latvian consulate,
Vilnius). A letter also went to Karl Schlyter, the former
Swedish justice minister, seeking a Swedish visa; another
to Count Carton de Wiart, a Belgian diplomat, inquiring
about travel to Belgium; a third to Professor McDermott in
North Carolina, asking for a teaching position at Duke. He
also wrote to the mother-and-daughter team who ran the
Pedone publishing house to let them know he was alive and
well. Had they received the manuscript sent before the
Germans reached Warsaw, the new book on international
contracts? Life went on.
From Vilnius, he headed west to the Baltic coast, toward
Sweden. In Kaunas, he told an acquaintance that refugee
life bothered him, like being a ghost in search of certainty
and hope. The three things in life he’d wanted to avoid had
all come to pass: “to wear eyeglasses, to lose my hair, and
to become a refugee.” Another acquaintance, Dr.
Zalkauskas, a retired judge, asked him how Poland could
“disappear in three weeks.” Such things happen, Lemkin
replied stoically. (Lemkin next saw the judge years later in
Chicago; Zalkauskas was working as an elevator man at the
Morrison Hotel.)
A letter from the Pedones returned the page proofs of his
new book, along with several offprints of his 1933 pamphlet
on barbarity and vandalism. The proofs were corrected and
returned to Paris, the book published a few months later.
Lemkin left Kaunas with a visa for Sweden. Stopping in
Riga, the capital of Latvia, he took tea with the historian
Simon Dubnow, the author of History of the Jews in Russia
and Poland. “The lull before the storm,” Dubnow warned
Lemkin. Hitler would soon be in Latvia.
69
LEMKIN ARRIVED IN Sweden in the early spring of 1940.
Stockholm was neutral and free, allowing him to enjoy the
customs and food, awaiting a hoped-for invitation from
North Carolina, enjoying time with his hosts, the
Ebersteins. The possibility of getting to America by boat
from Belgium was extinguished: the Germans occupied
Belgium and Holland in May 1940; France fell the following
month, then Denmark, Norway, Lithuania, Latvia, and
Estonia. All the friends he had visited were now under Nazi
rule. Simon Dubnow’s pessimism proved well-founded: he
was murdered close to his home two years after Lemkin left
Riga.
Weeks of waiting in Stockholm turned into months. Karl
Schlyter suggested he might lecture at the university, so he
took an intensive course in Swedish. By September 1940,
he was proficient enough to lecture in Swedish on foreign
exchange controls and to write a book on the subject, also
in the newly learned language. Letters arrived from Bella
and Josef, offering rare moments of happiness, tinged with
anxiety about their well-being under the Soviets.
Restless and driven, incapable of indolence, Lemkin
sought a bigger project. A map of Europe offered an idea as
“the blood red cloth with the black spider on a white field”
extended its reach across the Continent. Lemkin’s innate
curiosity confronted the nature of the German occupation.
How exactly was German Nazi rule imposed? Believing the
answer might be found in the minutiae of legal enactments,
he started to gather Nazi decrees and ordinances, as others
might collect stamps. As a lawyer, he understood that
official documents often reflected underlying objectives
without stating them explicitly, that a single document
might be less revealing than a collection. The group was
more valuable than the sum of its individual parts.
He spent time at the central library in Stockholm,
gathering, translating, and analyzing, looking for patterns
of German behavior. The Germans were orderly, putting
many decisions in writing, producing documents and a
paper trail, clues to a bigger conception. This might lead to
“irrefutable evidence” of crime.
He sought the assistance of others. One source was an
unnamed Swedish company with a Warsaw office that had
previously retained his services as a lawyer. Visiting the
headquarters in Stockholm to ask a favor, he inquired
whether the company’s offices across Europe might collect
copies of the official gazette published by the Germans in
occupied countries, then send them to Stockholm? His
acquaintance said yes.
Decrees and ordinances and other documents from
across Europe arrived in Stockholm. Lemkin read each one,
took notes, annotated the text, translated. The piles
multiplied, supplemented by materials obtained from
Stockholm’s central library, which held texts originating in
Berlin.
As Lemkin worked his way through the decrees, he found
common themes, the elements of “a concentrated plot.”
Conducted in parallel with Lauterpacht’s efforts on the
protection of individuals, work of which he was not then
aware, Lemkin’s work identified as an overall aim the
wholesale destruction of the nations over which the
Germans took control. Some documents were signed by
Hitler, implementing ideas aired in Mein Kampf on
Lebensraum, the creation of a new living space to be
inhabited by Germans.
A first Polish decree was signed by Hitler on October 8, a
month after Lemkin left Warsaw. German-occupied Poland
got a new name, Incorporated Eastern Territories
(Eingegliederte Ostgebiete), absorbed into the Reich. It
was a territory where the soil and people could be
“Germanized,” Poles rendered “headless or brainless,” the
intelligentsia liquidated, populations reorganized as slave
labor. Another decree was signed on October 26 by the
newly appointed governor-general, Hans Frank, who
declared with glee that his territory would soon be free
from “political agitators, shady dealers and Jewish
exploiters.” “Decisive steps” would be taken, Frank
announced. A copy of a third decree, dated August 1, 1941,
and incorporating Galicia and Lemberg into the General
Government, remained among Lemkin’s papers at the
Columbia archives.
Lemkin followed the trail, the “decisive steps” that
formed a pattern. The first step was usually the act of
denationalization, making individuals stateless by severing
the link of nationality between Jews and the state, so as to
limit the protection of the law. This was followed by
“dehumanization,” removing legal rights from members of
the targeted group. The two-step pattern was applied
across Europe. The third step was to kill the nation “in a
spiritual and cultural sense”: Lemkin identified decrees
from early 1941 pointing to the “complete destruction” of
the Jews in “gradual steps.” Individually, each decree
looked innocuous, but when they were taken together and
examined across borders, a broader purpose emerged.
Individual Jews were forced to register, wear a distinctive
Star of David badge, a mark of easy identification, then
move into designated areas, ghettos. Lemkin found the
decrees creating the Warsaw ghetto (October 1940), then
the Kraków ghetto (March 1941), noting the death penalty
for those who left the ghettos without permission. “Why the
death penalty?” Lemkin inquired. A way of “hastening”
what was “already in store”?
Seizure of property rendered the group “destitute” and
“dependent on rationing.” Decrees limited rations of
carbohydrates and proteins, reducing the members of the
group to “living corpses.” Spirits broken, individuals
became “apathetic to their own lives,” subjected to forced
labor that caused many deaths. For those who remained
alive, there were further measures of “dehumanization and
disintegration” as they were left to await the “hour of
execution.”
Immersed in these materials, Lemkin received a letter
from Professor McDermott in North Carolina, offering him
a teaching position and a visa.
70
THIS TIME, Bella and Josef agreed he should go, although
Lemkin felt torn at the prospect of not being able to “watch
over them” from distant America. Yet a journey to America
posed challenges, with the Atlantic route barred by war
and Stockholm awash with rumors that passage through
the Soviet Union would soon be curtailed. Lemkin decided
to leave immediately by the long route: to Moscow, across
the Soviet Union, to Japan, over the Pacific to Seattle, then
by train across America.
He would make the journey with few personal belongings
and many decrees, packed into several large leather valises
together with pages of his notes. Visas were obtained and
the Ebersteins offered a farewell dinner in his honor. The
dining table festooned with little Polish flags—red and
white—left an enduring memory.
After a brief stop in Latvia, allowing a last glance in the
“general direction” of Wołkowysk, he arrived in Moscow.
Lodging in an old-fashioned hotel with a cold lobby and a
huge bedroom, he walked the streets, admired Red Square
and the Kremlin and the pointed domes of St. Basil’s
Church, which reminded him of childhood books, of the
poet Nadson and his mother’s gentle voice. He dined alone,
in a city where people looked shabby and didn’t smile
much.
The next morning, he was covered in bites, because the
1917 revolution, of which he was no supporter, “had not
abolished the fleas.” He left from the Yaroslavsky Rail
Terminal, the longest train journey in the world, ten days to
Vladivostok, 3,600 miles to the east, sharing a
compartment with a Polish couple and their young children.
The train made its way past small, dreary Soviet towns, a
melancholic gray landscape of snow and slowly passing
hours, where only the dining carriage offered a distraction:
Lemkin liked to wait until someone who looked Russian
took a seat before pouncing into the empty seat opposite to
converse in the language of childhood. A sociable creature,
he worked out that Russians were “most gregarious” when
eating.
Five days on, the train pulled in to Novosibirsk station,
halfway across the Soviet Union, as busy as the Gare du
Nord in Paris or London’s Victoria Station. Two days later,
brilliant sun, deep blue water, and mountains introduced
Lake Baikal, north of Mongolia, a place of purity and scale,
appreciated by Lemkin. Two more days passed before they
pulled in to a small station with a name written in Russian
and Yiddish. He’d reached the Jewish Autonomous Region
created by Joseph Stalin, the minorities commissar, in
1928. As Lemkin stretched his legs, two shabbily dressed
men were reading “The Voice of Birobidzhan.” “A handful of
displaced persons, cut off from their roots,” Lemkin
reflected. Seven decades later, the situation remained
difficult, but at least they existed.
Forty-eight hours later the train rolled into Vladivostok, a
city with “little regard for beauty.” Lemkin spent the night
in an ugly hotel, then took a boat to Tsuruga, a thousand
kilometers across the ocean, a port on Japan’s west coast.
In the tired, anxious atmosphere, Lemkin recognized a
fellow passenger, a distinguished Polish banker, a senator
from a once wealthy family. Disheveled and unkempt, he
looked like a character from Joseph Roth’s Radetzky
March, a man who failed to notice the constant “crystalline
drop” that resided at the end of his nose.
The ship arrived in Tsuruga in the early days of April
1941, two months after he left Stockholm, a year and a half
after a last embrace with Bella and Josef. Lemkin
befriended a young couple and traveled with them to Kyoto,
Japan’s historic capital. Lemkin admired the buildings and
kimonos, the old cherry tree on the public square, opposite
the large Buddha. They went to a theater, understanding
not a word but appreciating the “impression of torture and
pain” created only by “expressive facial and bodily
tremblings.” The performance was preceded by a tea
ceremony, conducted in silence, geisha girls offering
service, each one in a uniquely patterned kimono,
expressions of individuality. The beauty of the ceremony
was not matched by the green tea, too bitter for his taste.
He visited the geishas’ living quarters, surprised that most
of the men present were married.
In Yokohama, he bought himself a kimono, sat on the
hotel terrace, looked out at the lights of the harbor, and
thought about Wołkowysk. The next day, he boarded the
Heian Maru, a modern ship, for the last leg to America.
Lemkin relaxed, the suitcases and German decrees safe in
the hold, and befriended a fellow traveler, Toyohiko
Kagawa, the Japanese Christian leader whose arrest a year
earlier had generated much publicity. Kagawa’s offense was
to apologize for Japan’s treatment of the Chinese; now he
was en route to America to argue against war. Together the
two men fretted about the state of the world.
71
AFTER A BRIEF STOP in Vancouver, with its lights as an “augury
of security,” the Heian Maru set off on the last stretch for
Seattle. On Friday, April 18, the ship entered the harbor
under snowcapped peaks, Lemkin on deck under a clear
blue sky, like the day that Warsaw was bombed. Suitcases
were off-loaded; passengers stood in line waiting to be
processed by a friendly Canadian customs officer. He
looked at Lemkin’s suitcases, then at the Pole. “How was it
in Europe? Very bad?” Lemkin nodded. The officer opened
the cases, surprised by the mass of paper, but asked no
questions. “I’m from over there myself. My mother still
lives in Shannon,” he said, putting his hand on Lemkin’s
shoulder. “Okay, boy—you’re in!”
Lemkin spent a day in Seattle, then boarded a night train
to Chicago. He sat in the glass-domed observatory car, a
new experience, as the horizon changed, passing the
Bavarian-themed town of Leavenworth, over the Rocky
Mountains, through Glacier National Park, across the
plains of Montana, close to Fargo in North Dakota.
Compared with frightened Europeans and diffident
Japanese, the Americans seemed relaxed. In Chicago, he
visited the Loop, the business district, like being “inside the
stomach of a huge industrial whale.” Efforts at
conversation failed. “The one on my right only grunted
‘Huh’ very loudly, and the man on the other side paid no
attention to me whatever, keeping his nose in his soup.” A
night train took him through the dreamy Appalachians, as
though descending from the heavens. On a short stop in
Lynchburg, Virginia, Lemkin was surprised to see two
entrances to the station restroom, one marked “For
Whites,” the other “For Colored.”
He asked a black porter whether a “colored” person had
to use a special toilet? In Warsaw, he recalled, there was
“one Negro in the entire city,” a dancer at a popular
nightclub, who was not required to use a separate toilet.
The porter was taken aback by the question.
The train pulled in to Durham station on April 21, a warm
spring day, a smell of tobacco and human perspiration in
the air. Lemkin spotted McDermott. Five years had passed,
yet the conversation carried on where it had left off, talk of
journeys, articles, governments, commerce, minorities.
McDermott was bemused by the extent of Lemkin’s
luggage and the contents. Lemkin wept on arriving at the
campus, the first time he permitted himself such a display
of emotion. So different from a European university,
without suspicion or angst, the smell of fresh-cut grass,
boys wearing open white shirts, girls in light summer
dresses, books being carried, everyone smiling. A sense of
idyll regained.
There was no time for rest, because the university
president asked him to address a dinner, to talk about the
world he left behind. He talked about a faraway place
where a man called Hitler acquired territories and
destroyed groups. He spoke of history, Armenians, and
oppression, constantly focused on an elderly lady near the
front, a woman with shining eyes and a benign smile. “If
women, children, and old people would be murdered a
hundred miles from here, wouldn’t you run to help?” he
asked, looking at her. The question generated thunderous,
unexpected applause.
Because the semester had ended, there was no
opportunity to teach. He returned to the suitcases and
decrees, keeping his office door open to welcome a
constant flow of talkative visitors. Faculty members,
students, librarians came and went, curious about the
square-headed, courteous man from Poland. He sat in on
classes, struck by the difference between an American law
school—focused on cases, debate, and disagreement—and
the European tradition, with the emphasis on codes and
deference. American students were encouraged to
challenge, not expecting to be spoon-fed. How remarkable
that a professor might care what a student thinks, Lemkin
reflected, so different from Lemberg.
Lemkin appreciated the generosity of Dean H. Claude
Thorack, who offered assistance with the German decrees.
The library staff helped, as did the faculty members he
befriended, who had unlikely connections to home. Judge
Thaddeus Bryson told him he was named after a Polish
military hero—Tadeusz Kościuszko—who fought for
American independence. Amazing, Lemkin told him. In
Wołkowysk, his brother Elias lived on a street named in
honor of the same man.
72
THE UNIVERSITY ARRANGED speaking engagements across
North Carolina at about the time that Lauterpacht was on
his own lecture tour. Lemkin bought himself a fine white
suit, which he wore with white shoes and socks, and a silk
tie that had a hint of color. In this natty outfit—I found one
photograph—he became a familiar sight on campus and on
travels around the state. He talked of Europe, speaking
with care and emotion. The passion was evident, as was the
heavy middle European accent.
McDermott invited Lemkin on a trip to Washington,
offering an opportunity to reacquaint himself with
colleagues from League of Nations days and to create a
constituency of supporters for his work on the decrees. He
liked Washington, the “subdued elegance” of Sixteenth
Street and the extravagance of Massachusetts Avenue, the
simplicity of the monuments, the lack of pretension. He
visited the Polish embassy and the Library of Congress.
There he met with the law librarian John Vance, whom he
knew from a conference held in The Hague four years
earlier. The slender, friendly librarian sported a generous
mustache and sideburns and had a voice with a timbre that
accommodated all the world’s concerns. Vance offered
Lemkin access to the resources of the Library of Congress
and his own address book. One important introduction
followed, to Colonel Archibald King, head of the War Plans
Division in the U.S. Army’s Office of the Judge Advocate
General, a senior military lawyer.
Credit 72.1
Lemkin in white suit, Washington, D.C., undated
Lemkin shared his ideas on barbarity and vandalism with
Colonel King, who listened patiently before revealing his
belief that Germany’s lawyers would surely respect the
laws of war. Lemkin explained the measures being taken in
Germany and the occupied territories, with documents in
proof. King asked to see them. Germany’s war was directed
“against peoples,” Lemkin explained, in violation of
international laws. Did Germany officially reject the Hague
regulations? “Not officially,” Lemkin replied, “but
unofficially.” He told Colonel King about Alfred Rosenberg,
Hitler’s principal theorist, but King hadn’t heard of him.
Germany wanted “to change the whole population
structure of Europe for a thousand years,” Lemkin
explained, to disappear “certain nations and races”
completely. King was taken aback and said he’d look into
the matter.
73
BACK IN NORTH CAROLINA, as Lemkin continued to work on the
decrees, a letter arrived from Bella and Josef. Slow to
travel, the tired envelope contained a tiny scrap of paper,
dated May 25, 1941. Josef thanked Lemkin for letters sent,
said he was feeling better, that the potato season was over
so he could spend more time at home. “For the time being,
we are lacking nothing.” He sent his son a few names and
addresses in America, and Bella offered reassurance that
all was “perfectly well” and they had everything they
needed. It was a message of survival. Write more often,
Bella asked, “be healthy and happy.”
A few days later, on June 24, as Lemkin listened to music
on the wireless, the program was interrupted. “The German
army has invaded eastern Poland.” The Germans broke the
pact with Stalin, sending troops eastward, to Lvov and
Żółkiew, to Wołkowysk and beyond. Lemkin knew what
would follow.
“Have you heard the news,” someone asked as he
entered the Law School, “about Operation Barbarossa?” He
heard “sorry” many times that day and those that followed,
because somber and silent colleagues and students
understood
the
implications.
Overwhelmed
with
foreboding, he carried on work. “Keep your chin up, be
strong,” McDermott encouraged him.
The Wehrmacht headed east, accompanied by the SS,
extending Governor Frank’s empire. Żółkiew was taken
within a week, then a day or two later Lvov was occupied
and Professor Roman Longchamps de Bérier murdered
with his three sons. That same day, farther north,
Wołkowysk was taken by the Germans, just beyond Frank’s
General Government. Lemkin’s family was now subject to
German decrees of the kind with which he was familiar.
That day brought another announcement: Ignacy
Paderewski, the founder of modern Poland, the man who
objected to the Minorities Treaty of 1919, had died in New
York while on a concert tour (buried in Arlington National
Cemetery, his remains were transferred half a century later
to St. John’s Cathedral in Warsaw). Shortly before he fell ill,
Paderewski gave a public address to remind listeners of the
distinction between good and evil and the role of the one
and the many. “It certainly is important to individuals as
well as to groups of individuals to keep on this path,” to
avoid unnecessary suffering and aimless destruction.
In September, five months after arriving in America,
Lemkin taught his first class at Duke Law School. That
same month, he traveled to Indianapolis to attend the
annual conference of the American Bar Association, where
he delivered a lecture on totalitarian control and added his
name to a resolution prepared by John Vance, condemning
German atrocities. The U.S. Supreme Court justice Robert
Jackson gave the after-dinner speech, titled “The Challenge
of International Lawlessness.” The talk was threaded with
ideas drawn from Lauterpacht, a man whose work Lemkin
was coming to know. Lemkin would not have been aware,
however, that another former student from Lwów had
played a role in writing Jackson’s words.
“Germany went to war in breach of its treaty
obligations,” Jackson told the attendees, discharging
America from an obligation to treat the belligerents equally.
He ended his speech with words of hope that there would
be a “reign of law to which sovereign nations will defer,
designed to protect the peace of the society of nations.”
The talk must have resonated with Lemkin.
74
A YEAR AFTER ARRIVING in Durham, Lemkin gave an address of
his own to the annual meeting of the North Carolina Bar
Association. Norman Birkett, an English judge, joined him
on the platform. It took a little time to uncover the full
report of the meeting, but eventually I found it.
The dean of the Law School, Thorack, introduced Lemkin
with a brief account of his escape from Poland. The Pole
had recently learned that his country house had been
appropriated by the Germans, the dean explained, and his
fine collection of paintings on the administration of justice,
one that “ran clear back to the Middle Ages,” had been
expropriated and sent to Berlin. The dean read out a short
biography. “Dr. Lemkin’s University” was founded as long
ago as 1661 and was called “the University of Lvov, and
that is spelled L-v-o-v.” Anyone who could suggest a better
pronunciation was invited to meet Thorack and Lemkin at
the end of the evening.
Lemkin spoke on “law and lawyers in the European
subjugated countries.” He talked of the “dark picture” that
Nazi decrees painted of life in Europe, acts that
undermined the courts, imprisoned lawyers, and violated
international laws. He mentioned Hans Frank, in whose
hands he believed the fate of his parents and millions of
Poles to rest. Would Frank protect the rights of civilians in
occupied Poland? The question answered itself. He referred
to a paper Frank had given at the Academy for German
Law in December 1939, when he said that law was nothing
more than “that which is useful and necessary for the
German nation.” Such words were “a cynical denial of
international law,” Lemkin declared, provoking the
“deepest aversion.” Frank’s conception subordinated the
individual to the state and was designed “to subordinate all
the world under Germany.”
Lemkin also used the occasion to restate his ideas on
barbarity and vandalism, recalling his own role at the
Madrid conference in October 1933. The conference
president told him he should not speak of Germany, he
explained, but he ignored the advice: “When I was reading
this proposal [on the need for new laws], the German
delegation, consisting of the President of the Supreme
Court of Germany, and the President of Berlin University,
Professor Kohlrausch, left the room of the proceedings.”
The account surprised me. The official records of the
Madrid meeting confirmed that those present included
Kohlrausch and the president of the German Supreme
Court (Erwin Bumke, who presided over the court whose
judgment Lauterpacht had reported earlier that year, the
one ruling that the Reich’s ban on sexual relations between
a German and a Jew covered acts outside Germany).
Lemkin’s colleagues Vespasian Pella and Judge Schlyter
were in Madrid, as was Judge Rappaport, who headed the
Polish delegation. Lemkin was not listed as present.
He wasn’t in Madrid, hadn’t read out the paper, didn’t
observe the two Germans leave the room. It was a slight
embellishment, without material consequence, but an
embellishment nonetheless.
75
AS WORD SPREAD about Lemkin’s work on the decrees, he was
offered a consultancy in Washington, D.C., at the Board of
Economic Warfare. It was the spring of 1942, and the
board’s role was to coordinate America’s war efforts
following the attack at Pearl Harbor and its entry into the
war. Work at the board, which was chaired by Vice
President Henry Wallace, gave Lemkin a direct entrée to
the upper echelons of American political life.
He decamped to Washington, a city engrossed by the war
effort, teeming with energy and populated with military
uniforms. Work at the board was challenging; no one there
seemed to know much about what was happening in
occupied Europe or exactly what the Germans were up to.
Colleagues weren’t much concerned about the information
he tried to share, absorbed as they were in their own
assignments, uninterested in the worries of a somewhat
emotional Pole who cut a lonely figure. His concerns were
seen as “theoretical” and “fantastic.” “Have the Nazis
really begun to implement these plans?” one colleague
asked. Everyone knew the stories of German atrocities
during World War I, yet most turned out to be wrong. Why
was the situation different now?
Dispirited, Lemkin found the time to socialize and
enjoyed the cocktail circuit. He gathered a few kindred
souls, including Katherine Littell, the wife of Assistant
Attorney General Norman Littell (the number of married
women with whom he associated was a notable feature of
the archival material). The Littells introduced Lemkin to
Vice President Wallace, with whom they were close
(Norman Littell noted in his diary that the vice president
appeared to be “greatly interested in Ralph Lemkin’s
collection of Nazi decrees”). Lemkin was asked to help the
vice president prepare a draft of a speech to be delivered at
Madison Square Garden in New York. (An early text argued
that America would only be a true democracy if it
contemplated “a colored man elected President of the
United States”; the precocious line was removed when
Littell suggested to Wallace that the words would haunt
him if he ever ran for the presidency.)
—
Occasionally, Lemkin would meet Wallace in his large office
in the U.S. Senate Building, hoping to engage him in his
work on the decrees. The vice president was more
interested in the cornfields of Ohio. “We have a debt to the
farmers of the world,” Wallace told him, that’s what they
should be focusing on. Lemkin was unimpressed by
Wallace, unable to penetrate the vice president’s “lonely
dreams,” so he decided to aim higher, encouraged by the
Littells, at President Roosevelt. That, at least, was Lemkin’s
interpretation.
He prepared a memorandum, but it was far too lengthy.
Reduce it to one page, he was told, if you want Roosevelt to
read it. How could the atrocities be so compressed? He
revised his approach, deciding to put a different idea to
Roosevelt: outlaw mass killing, he wrote, make it a crime,
the “crime of crimes.” Lemkin proposed a treaty to make
the protection of groups an aim of the war and to issue a
clear warning to Hitler. The memo went off, weeks passed,
a negative answer arrived. The president recognized the
danger, but this was not the time to act. Be patient, Lemkin
was informed; a warning would come, but not quite yet.
Like a mourner at his own funeral, without news from
Wołkowysk, Lemkin was brushed by melancholy. Yet once
again he picked himself up and decided to forget about
politicians and statesmen. He would write a book and
appeal directly to the American people.
76
DOCUMENTS FROM STOCKHOLM, the Library of Congress, and
friends across Europe continued to arrive in North
Carolina. On German actions, they offered detail (food
rations and the number of calories allocated to individuals
depending on the group of which they were a member) and
rumor, of mass executions and deportations. The gathering
decrees were part of a larger framework, a system for
killing. He used the materials to teach a course at the
University of Virginia’s School of Military Government in
Charlottesville. Students were impressed.
The idea for a book was intended to make such materials
more widely available. “I am from Missouri, show it to me”
was the reaction he hoped for, ever optimistic. He wanted
to persuade the people of America, by advocacy and
evidence, in a tone that was objective and scholarly. He
sent a proposal to the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace in Washington, where it ended up on
the desk of George Finch, who gave a green light. Finish
the manuscript, Lemkin was told, and Carnegie would put
the material into a publishable form. They agreed on a
length of two hundred pages, an honorarium (five hundred
dollars), and modest expenses. The timing was perfect,
with war crimes on the international agenda, following the
Declaration of St. James’s Palace. In October 1942,
President Roosevelt spoke about “barbaric crimes”
committed in occupied countries, calling for perpetrators to
answer “before courts of law.” He declared that “war
criminals” would be made to surrender, that individual
responsibility would be established by means of “all
available evidence,” and that a United Nations commission
for the investigation of war crimes was being created.
Lemkin had valuable raw materials to support these
efforts. He agreed to make the decrees available to the
board but insisted on a condition: the provenance of each
document must be acknowledged. The first page of each
document carried a brief note to the effect that the
collection had been compiled by Rafael Lemkin when
serving on the faculties at Stockholm and Duke Universities
and while serving as consultant with the Board of Economic
Warfare.
If Lemkin’s mood lifted, he nevertheless remained
anxious about the family and was troubled by health
problems. Forty-two years old, with dangerously high blood
pressure, he ignored medical advice to slow down and rest
as ever more information arrived in Washington about mass
killings in Europe. In December, the Polish foreign minister
in exile published a pamphlet titled “The Mass
Extermination of Jews in German Occupied Poland.” This
was based on material provided by Jan Karski (another
graduate of Lwów’s law faculty), who worked with the
Polish resistance in Warsaw.
A full year was devoted to the manuscript, although
Lemkin allowed himself some breaks. In April 1943, he
attended the dedication of the Jefferson Memorial in
Washington with the Littells, where they chatted with the
actors Edward G. Robinson and Paul Muni. President
Roosevelt arrived, to a cheering crowd, and stood in a
black cape just a few paces from Lemkin, Eleanor
Roosevelt close by. “Ralph’s impressions were the best,”
Littell noted in his diary, “as he had not seen the President
before.” Lemkin was struck by the Roosevelts’ “rare
spiritual quality.” “How lucky you are,” he told the Littells,
“to have two people of such unmistakable capacity for
spiritual leadership in the nation.”
Lemkin completed the manuscript in November. Even
with material omitted, it ran to more than seven hundred
pages, well beyond the length agreed on with Carnegie,
which irritated Finch. They agreed on a title—Axis Rule in
Occupied Europe—that was unlikely to produce a best
seller in Missouri or anywhere else. Lemkin’s preface
explained that he wanted decent men and women across
the Anglo-Saxon world to know about the ruthless cruelty
of the Germans against certain groups, based on “objective
information and evidence.” His focus was mainly on the
treatment of “Jews, Poles, Slovenes and Russians,” but of at
least one group—homosexuals—Lemkin made no mention.
He wrote of the misdemeanors of the “Germans,” rather
than the Nazis, making but one reference to the “National
Socialists,” and argued that “the German people” had
“accepted freely” what was planned, participating
voluntarily in the measures and profiting greatly from their
implementation. The desire to protect groups did not
prevent him from singling out the Germans as a group.
Lemkin acknowledged the help of a small coterie of friends,
offered no dedication, and signed off on November 15,
1943.
Axis Rule was not a light read. Organized to cover “each
phase of life” under occupation, the book was divided into
three sections. The first eight chapters dealt with “German
techniques of occupation,” addressing administrative
matters, the role of law and the courts, and diverse matters
such as finance, labor, and property. A short chapter
addressed “the legal status of the Jews.”
Chapter 9 followed. Lemkin had discarded “barbarity”
and “vandalism” and created a new word, an amalgam of
the Greek word genos (tribe or race) and the Latin word
cide (killing).
To this chapter he gave the title “Genocide.”
In the archives at Columbia University, I found a few
remnants of his papers. Among them was a single sheet of
lined yellow paper, with Lemkin’s scribblings in pencil. On
it, he wrote the word “genocide” more than twenty-five
times, before crossing them out and interspersing a few
other words. “Extermination.” “Cultural.” “Physical.” He
was toying with other possibilities, like “met-enocide.”
In the middle of the page, hidden among the thicket, was
another word, crossed out, with a line pointing away from
it, like an arrow. The word appears to be “Frank.”
Genocide concerned acts “directed against individuals,
not in their individual capacity, but as members of national
groups,” Lemkin wrote in chapter 9. “New conceptions
require new terms.” The evolution that led to his choice is
unclear. A year earlier, he’d made a proposal to the Polish
government in exile in London, using the Polish word
ludobójstwo, a literal translation of the German word
Völkermord (murder of the peoples), a formulation used by
the poet August Graf von Platen (in 1831), then by
Friedrich Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy (1872). He
dropped the word for “genocide,” without offering an
explanation. The chosen word offered a reaction against
Germany’s “gigantic scheme” of effecting a permanent
change to the biology of the occupied territories. The
“extermination of nations and ethnic groups” required the
intelligentsia to be killed off, culture to be destroyed,
wealth
transferred.
Entire
territories
would
be
depopulated, by starvation or other forms of mass killing.
Lemkin described the stages of destruction, with examples,
like a prosecutor who sets out his case.
The second part of the book set out the measures taken
in seventeen occupied countries, from A (Albania) to Y
(Yugoslavia). For each territory, the book detailed the
stages in which groups were oppressed, including Jews,
Poles, and gypsies. Disabled people got a passing mention.
His earlier analysis was refined. Once the country was
occupied, the targeted group was given a defined status,
and then each member of the group was to define himself,
in the case of Jews by an armband with a Star of David “at
least ten centimetres wide.” A ban on activities followed,
then sequestration of property, then a prohibition on free
movement and the use of public transport. Then ghettos
were created into which the groups were moved,
threatened with death if they left. Then came mass
transportation from the occupied territories into a central,
designated area—the General Government of Hans Frank.
That was a liquidation area, initially achieved by reducing
food rations to starvation levels, then by gunshot in the
ghetto, then by other means. Lemkin knew of the
transports, of the use of “special trains” headed to
destinations “unknown.” He estimated that nearly two
million people had already been murdered.
Credit 76.1
Lemkin scribbles, undated, ca. 1945
The analysis was detailed and original, supported by
evidence set out in the final section of the book, four
hundred pages of decrees translated into English. Here
were the minutiae, instruments of death recorded,
accessible, irrefutable. Many of the documents originated
in Poland, signed by Frank, including his first proclamation.
“With the establishment of the General Government,”
Frank decreed, “the Polish territories have been brought
safely within the German sphere of interest.” Lemkin
seemed to have Frank in his sights, a lawyer whose views
were the antithesis of everything he believed in.
Physically and emotionally exhausted, Lemkin retained a
practical perspective. The existing rules were inadequate;
something new was needed. A new word was accompanied
by a new idea, a global treaty to protect against the
extermination of groups, to punish perpetrators before any
court in the world. Countries would no longer be free to
treat citizens as they wished.
77
LEMKIN SPENT the first few months of 1944 in Washington,
writing articles and consulting, and sought to improve
himself with courses at Georgetown Law School (he
performed better in criminal law than in constitutional law,
for which he obtained a dismal D grade). That summer,
waiting for the book to be published, he was buoyed by a
decisive turn in the war. Moving westward at speed, at the
end of July the Red Army had taken Lemberg, Żółkiew, and
Wołkowysk. En route, it uncovered terrible atrocities. In
August, the Russian journalist Vasily Grossman, writing for
the Red Army magazine, described what they came across
in an article titled “The Hell of Treblinka.” How could this
happen? Grossman asked. “Was it something organic? Was
it a matter of heredity, upbringing, environment or external
conditions? Was it a matter of historical fate, or the
criminality of the German leaders?”
Such questions and accounts began to have an effect in
America, softened up by the warnings of Jan Karski and,
less widely, of Lemkin. President Roosevelt commissioned a
report from Henry Morgenthau Jr., the son of the man who
in November 1918 reported on the Lemberg pogrom
against Jews that caused Lauterpacht to take to the
barricades. Unlike his father, the younger Morgenthau,
joining with others, called for immediate measures to
prevent “the complete extermination of the Jews in
German-controlled Europe.” Inaction would cause the
administration to be accused of sharing responsibility. The
New York Times ran the first articles on death camps in
Poland, including one that focused on murders in Lwów at
the Janowska camp. The War Refugee Board, created by
Roosevelt a few months earlier, published a more detailed
report titled The German Extermination Camps of
Auschwitz and Birkenau.
This was the fertile context in which Lemkin’s book was
finally published in November 1944. A first review
appeared in The Washington Post on December 3, and a
month later The New York Times devoted the front page of
its book review section to a positive article that came with
a sting. “A most valuable guide,” wrote Otto Tolischus, the
paper’s
Pulitzer
Prize–winning
former
Berlin
correspondent, who nevertheless fretted that the book
deserved a larger audience than its “dry legalism” would
allow. He had more serious concerns, objecting to Lemkin’s
tirade against Germans and the claim that the terrible acts
reflected a “militarism born of the innate viciousness of the
German racial character.” He challenged Lemkin’s claim
that the “vast majority of the German people put Hitler into
power through free elections,” noting the irony that Lemkin
sought to protect some groups by blaming another.
Generally, the reviews were favorable, but not everyone
appreciated the focus on groups. In an archive, I came
across an irate letter sent to Lemkin by Leopold Kohr, an
Austrian academic refugee (a remarkable individual, he
originated the idea “small is beautiful,” which was given
greater prominence by one of his pupils, E. F. Schumacher).
Attached to the letter was a review that Kohr decided not
to publish. Axis Rule was “extremely valuable,” Kohr wrote
in the draft review, but “dangerous.” Lemkin had
selectively used the facts, and his attack should have been
on the Nazis, not the Germans. (“Dr. Lemkin does not
mention National Socialism once,” Kohr complained, not
entirely accurately, because the genocide chapter uses the
term, but only once.) Kohr complained that the book felt
like political journalism, not scholarship, because Lemkin
focused on facts that confirmed his preconceptions,
presenting only a partial account. This was a “Prussian
method of writing history.” Yet the strongest criticism was
reserved for chapter 9, which may be the “most
interesting” but was deeply flawed. By making groups the
“prime beneficiary” of protection and international law,
Lemkin had fallen into a trap, adopting “biological
thinking” of the kind that led to anti-Semitism and antiGermanism. Kohr told Lemkin he was wrong to focus on the
responsibility of groups rather than individuals and should
have adopted an approach that made “the individual, not
the group, the object of prime concern.” The road he’d
taken, “even if it does not always end in Hitler, leads to
him.”
The brutal critique was offered in private. I do not delight
in “attacking friends,” Kohr wrote, unaware that his
concerns would have resonated in Cambridge, England,
where Lauterpacht was finishing a book that focused on the
rights of individuals.
78
SIX MONTHS AFTER Axis Rule was published, the war in
Europe was over, Roosevelt was dead, and Wołkowysk was
back under Soviet control. Lemkin, without news of his
family, immersed himself in the practicalities of President
Truman’s desire for a war crimes trial for the leading
Germans, with Robert Jackson as chief prosecutor.
Lemkin contacted Jackson around the time that Hans
Frank was arrested by the U.S. Army in Bavaria, May 4. He
informed Jackson that his book was available in the library
of the Supreme Court and enclosed a copy of his article
“Genocide: A Modern Crime” (with a byline describing
Lemkin as a Pole with an international “viewpoint”). The
article retraced Lemkin’s dogged efforts, from his Madrid
pamphlet to the book, with the aim that any Nazi who “put
his foot abroad” would be caught.
Jackson read the article and marked it up. He highlighted
a quotation that Lemkin attributed to Field Marshal Gerd
von Rundstedt, deeply engaged in Operation Barbarossa.
Heading eastward, von Rundstedt was said to have noted
that one of Germany’s great mistakes in 1918 was “to spare
the civil life of the enemy countries,” that one-third of the
inhabitants should have been killed by “organized
underfeeding.” These words alone justified criminal
charges against the field marshal, Lemkin suggested.
On May 6, The Washington Post ran an editorial on
retribution, citing Lemkin’s book. By then, Axis Rule had
been borrowed from the Supreme Court library and taken
to Jackson’s office, where it would remain for more than a
year, to be returned in October 1946. Jackson thanked
Lemkin for writing as he recruited a legal team for the
trials, including lawyers from the War Department, where
Lemkin had worked as a consultant. Jackson’s principal
lawyer was Sidney Alderman, a genial and brilliant general
counsel of the Southern Railway system, who spent a
weekend immersed in Lemkin’s book.
By May 14, Jackson’s team had finalized a planning
memo. It summarized the evidence needed to prosecute
individuals for the “decimation of racial minorities” but
made no mention of “genocide.” Two days later, with the
draft memo in hand, Jackson met his legal team at the
Supreme Court and personally added the word “genocide”
to the list of possible crimes. The detailed report he sent to
delegations at the London Conference set out that list,
which included “genocide,” described by Jackson as the
“destruction
of
racial
minorities
and
subjugated
populations.”
Lemkin worked hard to get himself hired. On Friday, May
18, he was introduced to Alderman, an alumnus of Duke
University. Alderman told Lemkin (whom he erroneously
believed
to
be
German)
that
Axis
Rule
was
“comprehensive” and “very interesting” and might serve as
a “basic text” for Jackson’s team. Discussing how
“genocide” might be used in the trial, Alderman understood
that Lemkin was “very proud” of the word and his role as
its inventor. At the end of the month, Lemkin attended a
meeting at the Department of Justice. This was a
contentious affair, concerned with the role to be played by
the Office of Strategic Services (OSS)—the forerunner to
the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)—in gathering
evidence against the defendants. Jackson’s twenty-six-yearold son, Bill, a member of the team, attended the gathering,
a first encounter with Lemkin. (Bill Jackson was one of the
few people to work with both Lemkin and Lauterpacht,
present at the meeting at Cranmer Road a few weeks later,
when “crimes against humanity” made its way into the
Nuremberg Charter.) Bill wasn’t overly impressed by
Lemkin, a passionate man and a “scholar of parts” but
impractical and without any sense of the kind of case the
team was preparing. Nevertheless, the younger Jackson
and Alderman must have thought Lemkin to be
knowledgeable enough to justify an invitation to join the
team, if only to keep an eye on the OSS.
On May 28, Lemkin started work with the War Crimes
Office, as an official member of Jackson’s team.
Disappointment came quickly, because his ideas were
rebuffed. Although he was recognized to be knowledgeable
about the facts of German atrocities, the problem
concerned style and temperament. Some in Jackson’s group
thought he wasn’t a team player, others that he lacked the
instinct of a litigator, without a sense of how to run a case.
Concluding that Lemkin wasn’t up to the task, Alderman
approached Telford Taylor, another lawyer on the team,
with a view to getting Lemkin removed from the core staff.
They agreed to “eliminate him” from the inner circle and
use him for background tasks, an “encyclopedia” to be
available in preparing the trial. Despite being rated as “top
of the refugees” and the reliance placed on his materials,
he was shifted to the periphery. When Jackson’s team left
for London in July, it didn’t include Lemkin. He remained in
Washington, disappointed, working with a “rear echelon
Task Force” to develop ideas on the crimes for which the
Germans would be indicted.
79
ON THE INTERNET, I found a reference to a signed first edition
of Axis Rule. Sold, the bookseller informed me, but when I
told him I was interested in Lemkin’s inscription, he
introduced me to the buyer. A few days later, a kind note
arrived from a lawyer at the Department of Justice in
Washington, D.C.: Eli Rosenbaum, legendary hunter of
fugitive Nazis, sent a photograph of the words “To Dr.
Robert M. Kempner, with compliments, R. Lemkin,
Washington, D.C., June 5, 1945.”
The name was familiar: Kempner, a colleague of Lemkin’s
at the War Crimes Office, spent a part of the summer of
1921 as a young law student sitting in the public gallery of
a Berlin courtroom watching the trial of Tehlirian. He had
been expelled from the Reich in 1933 because of his
involvement in court proceedings against Hitler, and his
connection with Lemkin in Washington offered a direct link
to the trial that inspired Lemkin. The date of June 5 stood
out too: it was the day the Allies gathered in Berlin to carve
up Germany and agree on the punishment of the “principal
Nazi leaders.” They implemented an agreement reached
three months earlier, at Yalta, a commitment to “bring all
war criminals to just and swift punishment.”
Jackson’s team gathered in London in July, with British,
French, and Soviet colleagues, to work on the list of crimes
to be included in the Nuremberg Charter. Agreement was
reached and signed on August 8. The list of crimes in
Article
6
included
crimes
against
humanity—at
Lauterpacht’s suggestion—but not genocide. Lemkin was
bitterly disappointed and suspected the British of having
played a devious role. “You know how they are,” Bob
Silvers recalled Lemkin saying of the British during a class
at Yale a decade later.
Genocide having been left out of the Nuremberg Charter,
Lemkin knew that the crimes listed in Article 6 still had to
be elaborated into specific charges against the defendants.
This offered a further opportunity to introduce the charge
of genocide. I wasn’t able to ascertain exactly how he
procured an invitation to London to work with Jackson’s
team to prepare the indictments, but it appears to have
been at the instigation of Colonel Murray Bernays, who ran
Jackson’s office and thought Lemkin’s encyclopedic
knowledge might be useful. Bernays was one of Lemkin’s
few supporters, believing that he could help on the crimes
that occurred in occupied Poland.
Bernays met resistance. Commander James Donovan,
general counsel to the OSS, objected and sent a secret
memorandum to Jackson’s inner team, complaining that
Lemkin’s work was “inadequate,” that better Polish
scholars were available. Donovan thought Lemkin too
passionate, driven by an “emotional approach” that wasn’t
appropriate for such complex legal matters. He also
thought him to have “personality difficulties,” a view that
was supported but ultimately didn’t prevail. Colonel
Bernays offered to take responsibility for the Pole but
returned to Washington shortly after Lemkin arrived in
London. No one else was willing to take him under his
wing, yet somehow he managed to stay on, a loose cannon,
largely unsupervised, without his own assigned office or
telephone number.
80
IN LONDON, Lemkin spoke to anyone who’d listen, which
eventually proved to be his undoing. Complaints multiplied
that he was unmanageable and went off on unauthorized
frolics. Rumors swirled that he’d arranged informal
sessions with members of the UN War Crimes Commission,
that he had unauthorized meetings with prominent
individuals associated with the World Zionist Organization.
The complaints reached Commander Donovan’s office in
Washington, word that Lemkin was pursuing his own
agenda and claiming credit for the work of others. The final
straw was word that Lemkin had privately briefed the
press, then embarrassed Jackson’s staff by complaining
that members of the UN War Crimes Commission hadn’t
been provided with copies of Axis Rule.
“The sooner Lemkin is out of London,” Donovan told
Telford Taylor, the better. Lemkin fought his corner, long
enough to make a difference. A persistent “bugger,” Bill
Jackson later observed, Lemkin somehow hung on, through
September and into October, as work continued on the
draft indictments. He somehow turned Sidney Alderman
into an ally on genocide, in the face of considerable
opposition from others on Jackson’s team, under pressure
from politicians in states that required whites and blacks to
use different toilets. The British too were firmly opposed to
including the charge of genocide, the opposition led by
Geoffrey Darling “Khaki” Roberts, a huge, beetle-browed
barrister and King’s Counsel who was close to Hartley
Shawcross. The Americans liked Roberts, admiring the fact
he played rugby at Oxford and for England, but didn’t think
much of him as a lawyer.
Khaki Roberts’s opposition might have helped Lemkin.
Alderman took up the cause so that “genocide” made its
way into an early draft of the indictment. British opposition
firmed up against a word that was “too fancy” and
“outlandish” to put into a serious legal document. The
graduates of Oxford University “couldn’t understand what
the word meant,” Alderman told a colleague. Lemkin was
“greatly pleased” that the British failed to get rid of the
offending word.
On October 6, the Four Powers reached agreement on an
indictment that contained four counts, the last of which
was crimes against humanity. Yet genocide wasn’t
introduced under this head, as Lemkin had hoped, but in
count 3, on war crimes. This included ill-treatment and
murder of civilians in occupied territories and the
allegation that the defendants “conducted deliberate and
systematic genocide.”
Lemkin’s awkward persistence paid off. This was the first
time the word was used in any international instrument,
along with a definition, lifted more or less directly from
Lemkin’s book. Genocide was
extermination of racial and religious groups, against the civilian
populations of certain occupied territories in order to destroy
particular races and classes of people and national, racial, or
religious groups, particularly Jews, Poles, Gypsies and others.
The destruction of groups would be in the Nuremberg
trial, a moment of personal triumph for Lemkin. Years of
lugging documents around the world paid off, but at a
price. Three days before the indictment was agreed to, the
U.S. Army doctor Captain Stanley Vogel diagnosed Lemkin
with nasopharyngitis, a common cold. This offered a perfect
excuse to return him to Washington, just as Lauterpacht
was preparing to travel in the opposite direction, from
Cambridge to Nuremberg. By the time the indictment was
laid before the tribunal, on October 18, Lemkin was back in
the United States, exhausted but satisfied. “I went to
London and succeeded in having inscribed the charge of
Genocide against the Nazi war criminals in Nuremberg,” he
later wrote. “I included genocide in the indictment at the
Nuremberg trials.”
—
Crimes against humanity and genocide were both in the
trial.
PART V
The Man in a Bow Tie
81
AMONG MY GRANDFATHER’S PAPERS, I had found a small blackand-white photograph, taken in 1949, not quite square. It
showed a middle-aged man staring intently into the
camera. A faint smile across the lips, he wears a pin-striped
suit, with a white handkerchief neatly folded into the breast
pocket, and a white shirt. His polka-dot bow tie emphasizes
a slightly mischievous air.
For two years, a photocopy of the photograph remained
on the wall above my desk, competing with Miss Tilney. Her
role now resolved, I looked at him daily, taunted and
frustrated. “If you’re any good, you’ll find me,” he seemed
to say. Occasionally prompted, I tried what I could to rise to
the challenge, halfhearted efforts, inevitably fruitless
without a name. I scanned the photograph, tried facial
recognition on the Web. Nothing.
Time and again I returned to the modest information on
the back of the photograph. “Herzlichste Grüsse aus Wien,
September 1949,” it said, “Warmest wishes from Vienna.”
The signature was firm and indecipherable.
I tried to squeeze what I could from these words, the
small red stamp, the name and address of the photographic
studio where the photograph had been taken. “Foto F.
Kintschel, Mariahilferstrasse 53, Wien VI.” The street still
existed, but the studio was long gone. I spent hours trying
to decipher the signature, without success, and closely
examined the two other photographs of the same man. That
dated “London, 8 August 1951” was the same size, with a
stamp from the Kintschel photo studio, but in blue. On that
summer day, he wore a regular tie with diagonal stripes, a
handkerchief again in the breast pocket. Was he slightly
cross-eyed?
The third photograph was larger than the others,
postcard size. It bore no studio mark or signature. He wore
a dark tie with diamond pattern and a handkerchief. The
handwritten note on the back says “Wien-London, Oktober
1954.” He’d put on a little weight, the outlines of a double
chin now visible. He was cross-eyed. In blue ink, he wrote,
“Zur freundlichen Erinnerung an einen Grossvater”—“In
kind memory of a grandfather.” Had a grandfather died?
Had he become a grandfather?
“Warmest wishes from Vienna,
September 1949”
When I first asked my mother about the man, she said
she didn’t really know who he was. I persisted. Well, she
said, she did once ask Leon who the man was. “He said it
wasn’t important, that was all.” So she let the matter lie,
with doubts of her own.
So Leon knew who he was, and he kept two more
photographs of the same man, one taken in August 1951,
the other in October 1954. Why did Leon keep the three
photographs if the man wasn’t important?
In fact, my mother later clarified, she found them among
Rita’s papers, after she died in 1986. She then moved them
over to Leon’s papers, where they remained for a decade.
With a little more pushing, my mother shared a fleeting
memory from childhood, obscure but real. Perhaps she
recalled a visit by this man, to the apartment in Paris, on
the rue Brongniart, after the war. An argument ensued
between Leon and Rita, voices were raised, there was
anger, then reconciliation. “My parents had many
arguments like that.” Intense, then forgotten.
The information percolated slowly. Perhaps the man in
the bow tie was connected to Leon’s solitary departure
from Vienna in January 1939. The general circumstances—
the arrival of the Germans, banishment from the Reich—
were clear enough, but Leon’s decision to leave alone,
without his wife or young child, was less easily explicable.
Maybe the man in the bow tie was involved in some way in
Rita’s life in Vienna after Leon left. Maybe he was a Nazi.
Rita spent three years separated from husband and child,
fleeing Vienna only in October 1941, a day before
Eichmann locked the doors shut.
82
TIME PASSED without any progress. I put the three
photographs to one side, ready to give up. I concentrated
on Lemberg, Lwów, Lvov, Lviv, Lauterpacht, Lemkin. Then,
out of the blue, I got an unexpected break.
—
Soon after the first visit to Lviv, I attended a friend’s
ninetieth birthday celebration, a party at London’s
Wigmore Hall, the classical music venue. Milein Cosman
was the center of the festivities, a diminutive painter of
distinction and unbounded intelligence and warmth, the
widow of Hans Keller, a distinguished musicologist. She
and her husband arrived in Britain during the war years,
separately as refugees, she from Germany, he from Austria.
In the 1950s, they moved into a small house on Willow
Road in north London, close to Hampstead Heath. Forty
years later, my wife and I bought the house, where we live
today (opposite Willow Cottages, home to the nephew of
Sofka Skipwith).
Hans Keller worked with the Third Programme on BBC
radio, allowing him and Milein to meet many of the great
musicians and conductors of the twentieth century. They
knew Furtwängler (“most definitely not a Nazi,” Milein told
me, with passion) and Karajan (“a Nazi sympathizer and
opportunist,” her views rather clear). In 1947, she drew
Richard Strauss shortly before he died, a portrait that hung
at Wigmore Hall along with an extended family of her other
drawings, where a hundred or more friends and family
gathered to celebrate her.
Milein directed me toward a friend, a relative of her late
husband’s. Inge Trott was ninety-one years old, fiercely
intelligent, and, it turned out, amiably mischievous. She
was born in Vienna, arriving in London in 1938 at the age
of seventeen. After the war, she got a job as a laboratory
assistant with Professor Maurice Wilkins at King’s College
London, who would later share a Nobel Prize with Francis
Crick and James Watson, to whom Inge would deliver
samples of sperm in Cambridge. Inge felt pride in her
contribution, a transporter of the materials that unlocked
the secrets of DNA.
Our conversation touched on Vienna, the character of
Austrians, the Anschluss. She recalled the arrival of the
Germans, the parades, humiliations, the family home being
requisitioned by a German soldier in a gray uniform. I
mentioned the photograph of the man in a bow tie, the
handwriting, the indecipherable signature.
“Send me a copy,” Inge instructed. “I will see if I can read
the signature.” Probably you can’t decipher it because it’s
in old German, she added.
“I’ll pop it in the mail.”
“No,” Inge said firmly. “Scan it, e-mail it, that will be
quicker.”
—
That evening I followed her instructions, and the next day a
reply arrived. “I could read all the writing on the back of
the photo except the signature, because it was upside
down.” Scan it again, “the right way up this time.”
83
A
DAY PASSED,
the phone rang.
“The name is Lindenfeld,” Inge said with certainty before
a quiet note of doubt intruded. “Well, it could be
Lindenfels, with an s, but I don’t think so.”
She scolded Herr L. “I really don’t know why people
purposely make their signatures unreadable.”
The moment felt oddly dramatic. With a name, new
avenues for exploration would be unveiled. I would be able
to check all the Lindenfelds (or Lindenfelses) who lived in
Vienna in 1949 and then cross-check with those of that
name who were there in 1939. Simple enough, I thought,
with a set of telephone directories from those years. A
doctoral student at the University of Vienna helped with my
initial research, and then I obtained the assistance of a
private investigator. Frau Katja-Maria Chladek, a specialist
in Viennese genealogy based in Vienna, was jolly,
courteous, and fabulously efficient.
The law student found the 1939 telephone directory for
Vienna. No Lindenfelses, ten Lindenfelds. Nine of those
entries were men, with good Wagnerian names: Bela, Emil,
Erwin, Kurt, Max, Mendel, Rudolf, and Siegfried.
The next task was to find a phone directory for 1949 to
cross-reference the names. This proved to be more of a
challenge, but eventually Frau Chladek, the private
investigator, found a copy, then reported on the findings. By
1949, the ten Lindenfelds who lived in Vienna in 1939 were
reduced to just one. His name was Emil, Frau Chladek
explained, in her view not a Jewish name. The implication
she let hang was that something was amiss.
Emil Lindenfeld lived at Gumpendorferstrasse 87, in
Vienna’s 6th District, close to Foto Kintschel on
Mariahilferstrasse. A ten-minute walk from his flat to the
studio to collect the images, Frau Chladek explained. The
phone directory, which listed him as “a member of the
public administration,” included him until 1969, when his
name disappeared. “I think he died in 1968 or 1969,” Frau
Chladek said.
She continued her research in the library at Vienna City
Hall, which revealed that Emil Lindenfeld lived at the same
address for two decades after 1949. “I think the chances
are good that he is the searched person.” She was hopeful,
encouraging even, but it didn’t mean that the man in the
bow tie was Emil Lindenfeld. The next step was to find the
date of his death. With this information, Frau Chladek
thought she could obtain his Verlassenschaftsabhandlung,
the estate file that would contain details about his family,
maybe a photograph. Was I willing to instruct her to carry
out the search? I was.
—
I enjoyed her communications, lively and enthusiastic. A
couple of weeks after that exchange, she sent another email with new information, some of which was, in her
words, “very surprising.” Emil Lindenfeld was a merchant,
born on February 2, 1896, in the town of Kopyczynce in
Poland. In the file, the reference to Poland is crossed out
and replaced with “USSR.” He died on June 5, 1969, in
Vienna.
“Now to my very surprising news.”
Frau
Chladek
had
located
Herr
Lindenfeld’s
Totenbeschauprotokoll, the official document that recorded
his personal circumstances at the time of death. “The first
name Emil was written but then canceled,” she said. In its
place, an “unknown person” had inserted a different first
name, Mendel. It was exceptional for a name to be
changed, something she had come across only rarely in her
work. Her interpretation? “He was Jewish,” but the fact
was not public. Frau Chladek thought he was “a secret
Jew.”
—
The Protokoll threw up other information, so Frau Chladek
thought we should obtain Herr Lindenfeld’s complete
estate file. This she did, and it was indeed helpful. “His
mother was Sara Lindenfeld, who had her last residence in
London, GB,” Frau Chladek wrote. That might have
explained the references to London on the back of the 1951
and 1954 photographs, perhaps he went there to visit his
mother.
Frau Chladek had other information. When the war broke
out in 1939, Emil Lindenfeld was married to Lydia Sturm, a
Jew. They had one child, a daughter named Alice. At some
point in 1939, Lindenfeld’s wife, Lydia, and his daughter,
Alice, left Vienna for London. This offered a direct parallel
with Rita’s life: by the end of 1939, Emil and Rita were both
living alone in Vienna, their children and spouses having
left, coping with war, the Nazis, and loneliness.
Frau Chladek had yet more. When Emil Lindenfeld died,
his daughter, Alice, was living in Flushing, New York,
married to Alfred Seiler. Alfred and Alice had two children,
Sandra and Howard, born in the 1950s. The points of
connection were coming together. The birth of Sandra, in
1952, could explain the reference in the 1954 photograph
to becoming a grandfather.
What I needed was a photograph of Emil Lindenfeld, but
Frau Chladek said there were none in the files. I had other
leads, however, with the names of his grandchildren, so the
search shifted to New York.
84
I COULDN’T FIND an Alice Seiler listed in Flushing, New York.
Nor was any local information available on Sandra and
Howard Seiler, the grandchildren, in Flushing or anywhere
in the New York area.
Facebook offered a way forward. Among its hundreds of
millions of users was a Howard Seiler in Florida. The clue
was that he had been a high school student in Flushing.
The Facebook photograph showed a man in his early fifties,
consistent with the date of birth that Frau Chladek had
offered. Among Howard’s “friends” was a Sandra, with the
surname of Garfinkel.
I sent a message to Howard; no reply came. So I
searched for a Sandra Seiler Garfinkel and found an
address in Massapequa, Long Island, not far from Flushing.
The phone number wasn’t publicly available, but the
payment of a small sum produced a ten-digit number. On a
warm summer evening in London, I dialed the number, with
some trepidation.
A woman with a heavy New York accent answered. I told
her I was looking for Sandra Seiler, granddaughter of Emil
Lindenfeld of Vienna. This was followed by a long silence
and then “This is she.” More silence, then “This is pretty
weird. What do you want?”
I told her the story, in truncated form, that my
grandmother might have known her grandfather in Vienna
before the war. “My grandfather was Emil Lindenfeld; he
lived in Vienna,” Sandra said. She was skeptical, not hostile
or friendly, or unfriendly. She did offer a short history of her
family.
“Emil was married to Lydia, my grandmother. After the
Nazis arrived in Vienna, in March 1938 but before the war
began, Lydia left Vienna with her daughter, my mother,
Alice, who was fourteen years old. They went to London,
where my grandmother worked as a maid. After the war,
Alice and Lydia came to America, but Emil stayed in
Vienna. We were told that he could not travel to America
because he had tuberculosis. In 1958, my grandmother
Lydia died, and Emil came to America. I was six years old.
He stayed for six weeks, taught me German, then left. That
was the only time I ever saw him.”
Did she have any photographs of Emil? “Yes, of course.”
There might even be one on the Web, she added. Her
mother died in 1986, but her father had lived on, until quite
recently. “He wrote a book about his wartime experiences;
it’s on the Web, with photographs.” She gave me the
details, and as we spoke, I searched for Alfred Seiler’s
book. It came up instantly, with the cheery title From
Hitler’s Death Camps to Stalin’s Gulags. The reader was
invited to “Look Inside,” and as we chattered away, I did so.
The book was short, fewer than two hundred pages. I
scrolled down, at speed, checking out the photographs. At
page 125, a familiar face peered out from the screen, a
man in a dark suit with a white handkerchief in the breast
pocket and a dark, regular tie. Under the photograph was a
name, Emil. The next page had a picture of Emil’s wife,
Lydia, with photographs of Sandra and Howard, Emil’s
grandchildren.
I apologized to Sandra for my silence. The three
photographs of Emil had been in my grandfather’s papers
for decades, and for several years I had been trying to find
out who the man was. Sandra understood; she was
generous. Could I read out the words around the
photograph in her father’s memoir, she asked. She hadn’t
been able to bring herself to read the book, published only
after her father’s death.
I read out the text. Emil Lindenfeld-Sommerstein was a
childhood friend of Alfred’s father. He married Lydia Sturm,
the daughter of a man with a “Posamentrie” factory in
Jägerndorf in the Sudetenland, which made “fancy table
cloths, coverlets and such.” The marriage produced one
child, a daughter, Alice, sent to England in 1939 on “one of
the famous Kinder Transports.” Lydia followed soon after,
having obtained a permit to work as a domestic. A single
sentence hinted at Emil’s life in Vienna after his wife and
daughter left: “Emil was able to stay in Vienna during the
Nazi occupation as a ‘U-Boat,’ hiding out with non-Jewish
relatives and friends. Alice’s parents never reunited and
the father continued living in Vienna.”
Emil Lindenfeld remained alone in Vienna, like Rita, then
went into hiding, “with non-Jewish relatives.” This
suggested he might not have been fully Jewish or that he
stayed in Vienna as a non-Jew. After the war, Emil and
Lydia separated, unlike Leon and Rita, who reunited in
Paris.
Reading this account by Emil’s son-in-law reminded me of
my mother’s recollection, that the man I now knew to be
Emil Lindenfeld had visited Rita and Leon in Paris after the
war. When he left their apartment, her parents had argued.
An obvious inference—but not the only one—is that Rita
and Emil were lovers, that he had come to Paris after the
war to find her, to persuade her to return to Vienna. I said
nothing of this to Sandra at the time, although later, as we
became better acquainted, such thoughts were shared.
I thanked Sandra for taking my phone call. She asked me
to send her a copy of the photograph of her grandfather,
the one pinned to the wall above my desk, which I did. A
couple of days later, she wrote back. Our telephone
conversation had prompted her to dig up Emil’s papers,
which were sent from Vienna to New York after he died.
She had his photograph albums, some of which might date
back to the period before the war. If my grandparents had
photographs of Emil, perhaps Emil had photographs of
Leon and Rita?
“Send a picture of your grandparents,” Sandra
suggested. I sent the photographs of Leon and Rita from
their Nazi-era passports. Rita’s must have been taken
around 1941, the one in which she looked sad. I had long
believed this to have been because of the separation from
husband and child; now I began to wonder if it might be
connected to something else, maybe to do with Emil.
85
THE FOLLOWING DAY, a batch of e-mails arrived from Sandra.
She had gone through Emil’s albums and found several
photographs of Rita, she wrote, but only one of Leon (an
image of him with Rita and my mother taken on a Paris
street in the 1950s, a photograph that my mother has in
her album).
I opened Sandra’s e-mails with trepidation. The
photographs might help explain the silence that had fallen
over this period. The photographs were black-and-white,
eight of them, undimmed by the passage of time. I’d never
seen any of the photographs of Rita, the ones that Sandra
had sent. Each was unexpected.
The first was a studio portrait of Rita, in soft focus. She
smiled, glamorous in a way that I’d not previously noticed.
She was beautiful, her face carefully made up, with strong
and striking lipstick.
The next photograph offered a greater surprise. Taken on
a date unknown, it was an image of Rita with Leon’s
mother, Malke, which must have been one of the last
photographs ever taken of my great-grandmother. It
seemed familiar. Malke was elegant, eyelids long, sloping,
slanted like Leon’s. She wore a dark shirt with simple
buttons, silver hair brushed back. Her face had a faded
dignity and calm, before she knew what was to come.
Rita and Malke, Vienna, ca.1938
Yet there was something strange about the photograph,
which I half recognized. Then I realized that I had seen it,
but only a half of it, the side that showed Malke. My mother
has a copy of that half, torn down the middle, so the other
side, with the smiling Rita, has been removed. Only now,
with this more complete version, did I see that in the
original Malke was not alone, that Rita was with her.
The next photograph, the third, showed Rita lounging in
a deck chair in a garden, in spring, or maybe summer. A
fourth had her standing in a striped jumper, in formal
shoes, alone in a garden. Perhaps the same garden.
The final photographs came in a group of four. They
seemed to have been taken on the same day, again in a
tranquil garden. The leaves on the trees and bushes were
filled with life, young and vibrant. It felt like spring. The
individuals looked peaceful and relaxed. In one, Rita sat
alone on a bench, three women and Emil Lindenfeld lay on
the grass behind her. They were smiling and laughing,
talking. Each looked toward the camera and the unknown
photographer, carefree.
Rita and Emil, on the right, with unknown
man, Vienna
The next photograph showed Rita on the same bench,
wearing a hat. A third showed an unknown woman on that
bench, with a man in a hat and in lederhosen, wearing the
Weißstrümpfe (white stockings) that were a sign, as I have
learned, of sympathy toward the Nazis. Context was
everything, and that knowledge gave the socks a sinister
feel.
The last image showed Rita, standing between two men. I
did not recognize the one to her right, but on her left was
Emil, in lederhosen and white stockings, his arm entwined
with Rita’s. She smiled, elegant and peaceful, more
beautiful than I had ever seen her. (Later I would show the
photograph to my aunt, who had the same reaction: “I
never saw her looking like that, not ever.”) Emil stood with
his hands in his pockets. He had a mischievous air, head
tilted back, a faint smile as though caught out
unexpectedly.
Rita wore a dark flowery dress. Looking closely, but the
image was not too clear, I could see a wedding ring on her
right hand, presumably the one I wear today.
When were the photographs taken? Perhaps they were
taken before 1937, before Rita and Leon married, innocent
images. Or they could have been taken after January 1939,
when Leon left Vienna for Paris. I had often imagined that
period, Rita alone in Vienna, without daughter or husband,
looking after her mother. That was the reason she stayed
behind, we were told, a time of darkness, of overwhelming
unhappiness. Yet the photographs conveyed a serenity, not
consonant with the times, as war raged and the Jews of
Vienna found themselves on the rack, in ghettos, or on the
road to extermination.
—
Did the four photographs have a date? Sandra said they
were stuck onto the pages of the album. She could peel
them off but worried she might damage them. Come and
visit, she said, next time you are in New York.
“We can peel them off together.”
86
SEVERAL WEEKS LATER, I took a train from Manhattan’s Penn
Station to Massapequa, on the coast of Long Island, to
spend a day with Sandra Seiler, granddaughter of Emil
Lindenfeld.
It was less than an hour on the Long Island Rail Road.
Sandra waited at the train station, sitting in her car, blond,
black sunglasses. She invited me to lunch by the sea, a
seafood restaurant. After lunch, we drove to her home, and
I met her husband and a daughter. Emil’s photograph
albums were there, ready to be examined. She pulled out
the volume that held the images of Rita. We wanted dates.
The photographs were small, stuck close and hard to the
album’s dark pages, just as Sandra said, as firm as the day
they were fixed to the pages. We peeled one off as carefully
as possible, not wanting to cause damage. I hoped the
photographs had been taken in the mid-1930s, before Rita
and Leon were married. That would be simpler.
The first four photographs—including the one of Malke
alongside Rita—came off the pages to reveal no date. Then
the second set, the “garden quartet,” as Sandra called
them. Even more careful, not wanting to damage the backs,
I peeled each of the four photographs from its page.
The back of each photograph bore the mark of a studio,
Foto-Kutschera, in Vienna’s 4th District. On the back there
was only a barely discernible pencil mark, in the top righthand corner, four numbers: 1941.
Within a few weeks, I had found the address where Emil
Lindenfeld lived in 1941, a prosperous address at the
center of Vienna, outside the Jewish area, a location where
Emil could not have been living as a Jew. The address was 4
Brahmsplatz, a magnificent building, constructed in the
late nineteenth century, a few houses down from a home
once owned by the Wittgensteins.
I visited. To the side of No. 4 was a large garden, a
bench, grass, like the scene in the four photographs. Might
this be the garden where Rita and Emil were photographed
in 1941? I remembered how relaxed they appeared, an air
of intimacy that transcended the photograph.
Emil Lindenfeld and Rita were together in 1941, maybe
in this very garden. No month was given, but Rita left in
October, and the garden photographs offered the
appearance of spring. I plumped for April 1941. Did Rita
stay in Vienna to be with Emil? It was impossible to know,
and maybe it didn’t matter. By November, she had left
Vienna.
Leon had left precipitously in January 1939, alone. A few
months later, he sent for his daughter, benefiting from the
assistance of Miss Tilney. Rita remained in Vienna. Why
Leon would have left his daughter behind, and why he then
sent for her, I did not know. But the new photographs
suggested that Leon’s departure had something to do with
Emil Lindenfeld.
PART VI
Frank
Community takes precedence over the liberalistic
atomizing tendencies of the egoism of the
individual.
—HANS FRANK, 1935
Credit p6.1
87
IN MAY 1945, a few days after Hitler committed suicide, as
Lauterpacht worked with British lawyers on the
investigation of crimes and Lemkin lobbied to get himself
onto Robert Jackson’s prosecution team, Governor-General
Hans Frank awaited the arrival of the Americans. He did so
in the front room of his chancellery, now located in the old
Café Bergfrieden in the small Bavarian town of Neuhaus
am Schliersee. He was accompanied by a staff that was
reduced to just three, including Herr Schamper, the
chauffeur. After a brutal reign in occupied Poland, Frank
had returned to the vicinity of the family home, thirty-five
miles south of Munich.
As Frank waited, the Allies prepared the prosecution of
the main Nazi leaders, including Frank. He had been
Hitler’s lawyer and one of the leading jurists of National
Socialism, acting against the rights of individuals and
groups, motivated by an ideology that put the love of the
führer, and the idea of national community, first. For five
years, he was the king of occupied Poland, with a wife and
mistress, five children, thirty-eight volumes of detailed
daily diaries, and a collection of paintings that included a
famous portrait by Leonardo da Vinci. He had even brought
The Lady with an Ermine home with him to Neuhaus, and
she now rested in the Andachtsraum, a faux chapel.
On Friday, May 4, an American military jeep pulled up.
Lieutenant Walter Stein jumped out, walked up to the
building, entered by the front door, and asked, “Which of
you is Hans Frank?”
88
FRANK WAS BORN in Karlsruhe on May 23, 1900, near the
Black Forest, to a Protestant father and a Catholic mother.
Like Lauterpacht and Lemkin, he was the second of three
children. The family soon moved to Munich, where Frank
attended school. In June 1916, his older brother, Karl, died
of an unexpected illness. After his parents separated, he
divided the next years between Prague, with his mother,
and Munich, where his father worked as a lawyer before he
was disbarred for defrauding his clients.
As World War I ended, Frank was conscripted into the
Wehrmacht and then associated himself with a private
right-wing militia. He joined an organization of antiCommunist and anti-Semitic conservatives, the Thule
Society, which allowed him to attend meetings to vent a
strongly held distaste for the Versailles Treaty. In January
1920, at Munich’s Mathäser-Bräu, Frank saw Adolf Hitler
speak, as one of the first members of the German Workers’
Party (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, or DAP), a forerunner to
the NSDAP. The following month, he attended a meeting
with Hitler at the Hofbräuhaus, where he was present at
the proclamation of a political program for the NSDAP, the
Nazi Party that he eventually joined.
In 1923, as a student, he joined the Sturmabteilung, the
Storm Troopers known as the SA. That same year, he
enthusiastically supported Hitler’s putsch, an attempt to
overthrow the Weimar government, joining a march into
the center of Munich, where he set up a machine gun
emplacement on the east side of the city’s Museum Bridge.
The failure of the putsch and Hitler’s arrest ignited Frank’s
interest in völkisch politics. He fled to Italy, fearing legal
difficulties. Two years later, in 1925, he met Hitler on a
Munich street, a harbinger of future possibilities.
After completing legal studies at the University of Kiel
and graduating in 1926, he worked as a lawyer in private
practice and taught in the law department of Munich’s
Technical University. Solid and opportunistic, not an
intellectual or a highflier, he experienced a sudden change
of trajectory in October 1927 when he saw an
advertisement in the Völkischer Beobachter newspaper
seeking a lawyer to represent Nazi defendants in a Berlin
trial. Frank applied, was hired, and eventually entered into
a world of high-profile political trials.
He became one of the Nazis’ legal luminaries, defending
the party in dozens of trials. One of the more notorious was
a treason trial in Leipzig, in September 1930, involving
three military officers accused of creating a Nazi cell in the
German army. Defending the three, he called Hitler as a
witness. With Frank’s help, Hitler used the courtroom to
generate media attention with the claim that he would only
seek political power by legal means, in effect a public
commitment to the Oath of Legality (Legalitätseid). The
publicity cemented the relationship between the two men,
although Hitler would never have much time for lawyers or
legal niceties, even of Frank’s flexible brand.
Frank’s career ascendant, he was elected a member of
the Reichstag and married Brigitte Herbst, five years his
senior and a secretary at the Bavarian parliament. His true
love and sweetheart, however, was Lilly Grau, the daughter
of a Munich banker, but the relationship was terminated by
Lilly’s family, who deemed Frank unsuitable. Brigitte was a
nondescript but strong-willed woman, who soon bore him
two children. Three more followed, the last being Niklas,
born in 1939.
As large parts of Germany embraced Hitler, Frank made
the most of his connections to the leadership, positioning
himself as a legal “theorist.” In 1931, he published a long
article on the Jewish “jurisprudence of decadence,” an
approach to the law, he argued, that alienated Germans
from understanding the difference between right and
wrong. Now an insider, after Hitler was appointed
chancellor, in April 1933 Frank became the state minister
of justice in Bavaria.
89
FOUR MONTHS AFTER Hitler took power, on the morning of
Saturday, May 13, Hans Frank flew in a tri-motored
German government plane to the Aspern Airfield to the east
of Vienna, not far from Leon’s liquor store in Leopoldstadt.
A newspaper described the opening of the plane’s door and
the descent onto Austrian soil of seven German ministers,
led by a beaming Frank, the first visit by representatives of
the new Nazi government of Germany. The Reichstag had
recently been destroyed by fire, federal elections held (at
which the Nazis won the largest share of the vote), and
new legislation adopted, allowing Hitler’s new government
to pass laws that deviated from the constitution. These
measures were viewed with anxiety by many in Austria,
including its diminutive chancellor, Engelbert Dollfuss.
Frank was known to have a close relationship with the
führer, for service as his lawyer. Hitler’s numerous court
appearances before 1933 were widely reported, and at
least one media photograph showed Hitler on the steps of
the courthouse, with Frank at his side in black legal robes.
Such images helped Frank. Years of loyal service to the
National Socialists made him a familiar—and feared—
figure. Within weeks of being appointed minister of justice,
he signed a raft of measures to clean up Bavaria’s legal
system. These specifically targeted Jews, forbidding them
to enter courts of law and removing all Jewish judges and
state’s attorneys from office. Frank’s direct involvement in
such measures, coupled with his connection to Hitler, made
the visit to Austria unwelcome, opposed by Chancellor
Dolfuss as an unfriendly act. Frank didn’t help with a
speech given shortly before the visit, threatening violent
intervention if Austria didn’t align itself with Germany’s
new direction.
Credit 89.1
Hitler with Hans Frank, outside a German court, 1928
Two thousand sympathizers greeted Frank at the Vienna
airfield, singing “Deutschland über Alles” and the “Horst
Wessel Song,” the Nazi anthem. Frank’s entourage was
driven to the Vienna Brown House, the streets lined with
citizens who cheered or whistled, depending on political
affiliation. Many of Frank’s supporters wore white socks,
the symbol of support for the Nazi cause. In the evening,
Frank addressed a large crowd of supporters to mark the
250th anniversary of Vienna’s liberation from the Turks (a
victory delivered by Jan Sobieski III, king of Poland,
celebrated with the construction of the castle in Żółkiew, on
a wall of which I had found the photographs placed there
by a courageous Ukrainian curator). Frank delivered a
personal greeting from Hitler. The führer would soon be
with them “to visit the grave of his parents.”
Later, Frank met privately with journalists. The New York
Times correspondent noted the Bavarian minister’s style,
treating the group of twenty “as if it had been 20,000.” He
continually raised his voice, screaming out objections to
any negative views expressed toward him or Hitler. “It is
only a question of what measures shall be taken,” he
threatened, if Austria didn’t come into line with Germany.
From Vienna, Frank traveled to Graz, where he told a
large crowd that an insult to him was an insult to Hitler,
and then on to Salzburg. The visit caused a commotion in
Austria, the Dollfuss government declaring him to be
unwelcome. The visit was widely reported around the
world, most likely picked up by Lauterpacht in London and
Lemkin in Warsaw. Word would also have spread to the
well-informed citizens of Lwów and Zhovkva (Żółkiew),
many of whom followed developments in Austria.
A week after Frank’s departure, Chancellor Dollfuss
delivered an address to reassure his citizens, words
transmitted in translation to the United States. Austria
would not emulate the German government by taking
measures against Jews; it was a country inspired by
modern conceptions in which “all citizens have equal
rights.” He was referring to the Austrian Constitution
crafted by Lauterpacht’s teacher Hans Kelsen, one that
offered individual rights for all.
Frank’s visit left a mark, offering encouragement to many
in Austria who were inclined to the Nazi approach. A year
later, Dollfuss was dead, assassinated by a group of Nazi
sympathizers, led by thirty-three-year-old Otto von Wächter,
Lauterpacht’s classmate at the University of Vienna, who
fled to Germany.
90
NINETEEN THIRTY-FIVE WAS a good year for Frank. He bought a
large country house in Bavaria (the Schoberhof, near
Schliersee), which I visited eighty years later, shortly
before it was torn down, Frank’s crest still visible in his
office under the rafters. He assisted in the preparation of
the Nuremberg decrees, anti-Semitic laws that stripped
Jews of citizenship rights and banned extramarital
intercourse between Germans and Jews. In August, he
presided over a joint meeting of the Akademie für
Deutsches Recht (the Academy for German Law, which he
had founded a couple of years earlier) and the eleventh
International Penal and Penitentiary Congress, held at the
Kroll Opera House (which served as the Reichstag after the
fire).
Frank had founded the academy to offer an intellectual
and ideological vision for German lawyers. As president, he
delivered the keynote address to the congress, choosing
“international penal policy” as his subject, an opportunity
to set out some thoughts on the future direction of the
criminal law. He offered a riposte to Lemkin and his ilk,
those who pushed for a new list of international crimes and
an international criminal court. A fine orator, Frank
captivated the crowd, even if (like the führer) he spoke
with a curiously high pitch, a product of excitement,
intensity, and power.
Frank’s speech focused on issues of keen interest to
Lauterpacht and Lemkin, although neither was in the
audience. Vespasian Pella, the Romanian professor who
wrote on barbarity and vandalism, was present. Judge Emil
Rappaport, Lemkin’s mentor and a member of the
congress’s organizing committee, failed to show. Frank
expressed strong objections to universal jurisdiction, an
idea he opposed on the grounds it would destroy
international criminal law, not strengthen it. No laws or
international organizations would resolve the differences
between Bolshevism and National Socialism, and there
would be no common policies for states that didn’t share
“the same moral principles.” He attacked the ideas of
Professor Henri Donnedieu de Vabres, another of Lemkin’s
colleagues, singled out by name, although not in
attendance. A few weeks earlier, Frank had invited
Donnedieu to address the academy on the subject of
international crimes and “aggressive war.”
Frank brushed aside Donnedieu’s ideas, because they
would require the creation of a superstate. What about the
Frenchman’s proposal for “an international court of
criminal justice”? A myth. World law? “An idle dream.”
Expand the list of international crimes? Never. One idea
that Frank did like, however, was to criminalize the global
Jewish boycott against Germany.
What did Frank want? “Non-interference in the internal
affairs of foreign states” was a fine idea supported by Frank
to cover any criticism of Germany. So were independent
judges, but only up to a point. He wanted strong
government based on values that protected the vision of
“national community,” a legal system that was informed by
the “idea of community,” which should prevail over all else.
There would be no individual rights in the new Germany, so
he announced a total opposition to the “individualistic,
liberalistic atomizing tendencies of the egoism of the
individual” (“Complete equality, absolute submission,
absolute loss of individuality,” the writer Friedrich Reck
recorded in his diary, citing Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed as
reflecting ideas of the kind expressed by Frank).
Frank listed all the positive developments since 1933,
including Hitler’s new approach to criminal policy, one
from which the world should learn. Innovations included
“eugenic prophylactics,” the “castration of dangerous
moral criminals,” and the “preventive detention” of anyone
who threatened the nation or “national community.” Those
who should not have children would be sterilized (he
described this as a “natural process of elimination”),
undesirables deported, new racial laws adopted to prevent
“the mixing of absolutely incompatible races.” To this
international audience, he made no explicit mention of the
Jews or the gypsies, but those present knew of whom he
spoke. He was silent too about the scourge of
homosexuality, a subject addressed earlier in the year by
the Reich penal code (which he helped draft), which
criminalized all homosexual acts. The new Germany would
be “racially intact,” he declared, allowing Germany to “get
rid of the criminal as a healthy body gets rid of the germs
of disease.” The images had been lifted from the writings of
Julius Streicher, Hitler’s racial theorist, with whom he and
Donnedieu had dined in February.
It was easy to imagine his voice at its highest pitch.
“National Socialism has abandoned the false principle of
humanity,” he shrilly proclaimed, against all “excessively
humane” behavior. Suitable punishments were on their
way, to be handed down to expiate violations of the duty of
loyalty to community. The Nazis were waging a “war on
crime for all time.”
Audience reaction was mixed. The majority of the 463
delegates present were Germans, who cheered loudly.
Others were less supportive. Geoffrey Bing, a young
English barrister who later became a Labour MP (and the
first attorney general of independent Ghana), wrote an
account expressing horror at the sight of foreign officials,
criminologists, and reformers who cheered Frank’s
“monstrous proposals.” Bing gave a clear warning: be
aware of the new breed of lawyers taking over Germany,
men like Dr. Frank, “a fanatical exponent of the principle of
reprisal and intimidation.”
91
FOUR YEARS LATER, as Germany marched into Poland and
divided the country with the Soviet Union, Rudolf Hess
summoned Frank to Silesia for a personal meeting with
Hitler. Following a ten-minute conversation, Frank was
appointed governor-general of German-occupied Poland,
the führer’s personal representative in an area known as
the General Government for the Occupied Polish
Territories, a population of 11.5 million people in a territory
that encompassed Warsaw in the north and Kraków in the
west. He took up the post on October 25, 1939: Hitler’s
decree stated that Frank reported personally to the führer
—a point noted by Lemkin—and ordered that the entire
administration “be directed by the Governor General.”
Frank was now personally in charge; his wife, Brigitte,
became queen.
In an early interview, Frank explained that Poland was
now a “colony,” its inhabitants the “slaves of the Greater
German World Empire” (lawyers in Berlin sought to ensure
that the international laws that governed occupied
territories did not apply—the General Government was
effectively treated as an annexed part of the Reich, so
German law applied, supposedly unconstrained by
international law). In a singular humiliation for Poland,
Frank installed himself and his government at the Wawel
Castle in Kraków, the former home of Polish kings. Brigitte
and their five children joined him, including the youngest,
Niklas, born a few months earlier in Munich. Otto von
Wächter, fresh from Vienna, was appointed governor of
Kraków, one of Frank’s five deputies.
Frank acted like a sovereign, the Polish people being told
they were fully subject to his power: this was not a
“constitutional state” in which people had rights, and there
was to be no protection for minority groups. Warsaw was
badly damaged in the short war, but Frank decided not to
rebuild. Instead, he signed a raft of decrees, many of which
would make their way into the luggage that Lemkin would
cart around the world. Frank’s writ covered a large
territory and many subjects, from wildlife (protected) to
Jews (not protected). From December 1, all Jews more than
ten years old were required to wear a white stripe at least
ten centimeters wide on the right sleeve, with a Star of
David on it, on indoor and outdoor clothing. To save public
funds, the Jews were required to produce their own
armbands.
From the start of his reign, Frank kept a daily diary
(Diensttagebuch), a record of activity and accomplishment.
By the time he left Kraków, there were at least thirty-eight
incriminating volumes that had been preserved, eleven
thousand foolscap pages of daily entries typed up by two
male secretaries. The earliest entries reflected the sense of
permanence that characterized the regime’s actions, noting
that the territory would be a place to give effect to
Himmler’s desire that “all Jews be evacuated from the
newly gained Reich territories.” Poles would be treated
with brutality: concerned that they might wish to celebrate
the country’s independence, on November 11, Frank
passed a decree to prohibit the display of any celebratory
poster, with the penalty of death for any breach. Frank
assumed total control over life and death and intended to
exercise it, putting into effect ideas expressed at the 1935
Berlin Congress: in his General Government, the
“community of the people” would be the only legal
standard, so individuals would be subjugated to the will of
the sovereign, the führer.
92
IN OCTOBER 1940, Frank traveled to Berlin to dine with
Hitler in his private apartment and to discuss the future of
his territory. The other guests were Baldur von Schirach,
the new Reich governor of Vienna, and Martin Bormann,
Hitler’s private secretary. Frank offered a personal account
of progress in the General Government. Bormann’s note of
the meeting recorded the early successes: “Reich Minister
Dr. Frank informed the Führer that the activities in the
Government General could be termed very successful. The
Jews in Warsaw and other cities were now locked up in the
ghettos and Krakow would very shortly be cleared of
them.”
Frank’s efforts were celebrated. What about the Jews—
like Rita and Malke—who remained in Germany or Austria?
The four men discussed Frank’s role and that of his
government, in particular the welcome offer of assistance
for “transportations” of these Jews toward the east. Frank
initially raised concerns but quickly capitulated:
Reichsleiter Von Schirach, who had taken his seat at the Führer’s
other side, remarked that he still had more than 50,000 Jews in
Vienna whom Dr. Frank would have to take over. Party Member Dr.
Frank said this was impossible. Gauleiter Koch then pointed out
that he, too, had up to now not transferred either Poles or Jews
from the District of Ziechenau, but that these Jews and Poles
would now, of course, have to be accepted by the Government
General.
Frank was overruled. The decision was taken to transfer
the Viennese Jews into his territory. Frank returned to
Kraków knowing that his population was about to gain a
large influx of new inhabitants. He would do what he was
told.
93
FRANK’S TERRITORY SOON EXPANDED. Following Hitler’s attack
on the Soviets in June 1941 with Operation Barbarossa, the
German army overran the Soviet-controlled territory of
Poland (and the former Austro-Hungarian province of
Galicia), which was incorporated into the General
Government on August 1. Frank took control of Lemberg,
which became the capital of Distrikt Galizien, with its own
governor, Karl Lasch. Frank had used his powers to save a
few intellectuals from detention in Kraków, but not
Professor Longchamps de Bérier in Lemberg, teacher of
Lauterpacht and Lemkin. For him, there was no mercy.
The expansion brought new challenges. The easy success
of the Wehrmacht, marching eastward into lands that were
rich with Jews, gave Frank control over more than 2.5
million Jews across the General Government. The numbers
were even greater—3.5 million—if Jewish “mixtures” were
included. Frank worked on their future with Himmler, and
even if the two men didn’t always see eye to eye, Frank,
who was keen to accommodate, ultimately chose not to
cause difficulties. Himmler decided, and Frank followed.
In December, Frank informed a cabinet meeting at the
Wawel Castle about a conference to be held in Berlin on the
future of the Jews. Held at Wannsee under the direction of
SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, it would
inaugurate a “great Jewish migration.” State Secretary Dr.
Josef Bühler would attend as his representative, he told the
cabinet, warning colleagues to eliminate “all feeling of
pity” and leaving no doubt as to the meaning of the term
“migration.” “We must annihilate the Jews, wherever we
find them and wherever it is possible,” he explained, to
maintain the structure of the Reich. Reading this diary
entry, so faithfully entered, I wondered whether his
secretaries ever questioned the wisdom of committing such
pronouncements to writing.
The Wannsee Conference met in January 1942, as
Lauterpacht dined with Robert Jackson at the Waldorf
Astoria in New York and as Lemkin pored over Frank’s
decrees in a small university office in Durham, North
Carolina. The conference minutes were taken by Adolf
Eichmann, recording an agreement “to purge German
living space of Jews by legal means,” a technique referred
to as “forced emigration.” A list of Jews was prepared,
eleven million in total, 20 percent of whom were under
Frank’s control. “Europe will be combed through from West
to East,” Bühler told Frank on his return from Berlin. The
“evacuated Jews” from Austria—a mere 43,700 remained—
would be taken to “transit ghettos,” then transported east
to the territory of Frank’s General Government. The elderly
living in Austria or Germany would first be sent to an old
people’s ghetto in Theresienstadt. My great-grandmothers
Malke Buchholz and Rosa Landes were among them.
Keen to play a useful role, Frank communicated his
enthusiasm to Bühler, who expressed his leader’s support
to Heydrich and the others present at Wannsee. The
General Government would be absolutely delighted, Bühler
told the conference, “if the final solution of this question
would begin in the General-Gouvernement.” The territory
offered numerous advantages, with good transport and
plenty of labor, so the removal of the Jews could be
implemented “speedily.” The administrative agencies of the
General Government would provide all necessary
assistance, Bühler said, ending his Wannsee presentation
with a request.
Roughly translated, Eichmann’s minutes recorded the
unambiguous offer: please allow the Jewish question to be
resolved as quickly as possible, and allow us the honor to
begin.
94
BÜHLER RETURNED TO Kraków, reporting to Frank that the
offer of full assistance from the General Government had
been accepted with keen gratitude. This coincided with the
arrival in Kraków of the Italian journalist Curzio Malaparte,
sent by the newspaper Corriere della Sera to interview
Frank. With a soft spot for Italy and Mussolini (a personal
friend), Frank was delighted to receive Malaparte at the
Wawel, offering a private dinner to which senior officials
were invited, with their wives. Among the guests was Otto
von Wächter, the governor of Kraków, and Josef Bühler,
recently returned from the Wannsee Conference.
Credit 94.1
Frank (center) hosts a dinner party at the Wawel Castle (undated)
Malaparte was impressed by the detail, the tight-fitting
gray uniforms, red armlets, and swastikas. A host with fine
wines, Frank sat at the head of the table on a high, stiffbacked chair, close to Bühler. Malaparte noticed Frank’s
black glossy hair and high ivory-white forehead, the
prominent eyes with their thick, heavy eyelids, and Bühler’s
flushed cheeks, perspiring temples, eyes that glistened with
deference to Frank. Each time Frank asked a question,
Bühler was the first with an answer, shouting and fawning.
“Ja, ja!”
Did Malaparte know that Bühler had recently returned
from the Wannsee Conference in Berlin? Did Bühler talk of
Heydrich, of the measures agreed on, of the “total solution
of the Jewish question in Europe”? The Italian didn’t report
on such matters in the article he filed with Corriere della
Sera, which was published on March 22, 1942. He said
little about the Jews—a passing reference to the
confiscation of property, which caused difficulties—but did
shower adulation on Frank. “He is a man of great stature,
strong, agile,” the Italian wrote, “with a subtle mouth, a
slim and aquiline nose, large eyes, an ample forehead,
illuminated by a premature baldness.”
Frank, who spoke fluent Italian, would have been pleased
with such a description of him, a leader “sitting on the
throne of the Jagellions and Sobieski.” A revival of the
great Polish tradition of royalty and chivalry was under
way.
“My one ambition,” Frank was quoted as saying, “is to
elevate the Polish people to the honor of European
civilization.” After dinner, they retired to Frank’s private
apartment. Sprawled across deep Viennese settees and
large armchairs upholstered in soft leather, the men talked,
smoked, drank. Two valets dressed in blue livery moved
around the room, offering coffee, liqueurs, and sweets. The
opulence was great: green-and-gold-lacquered Venetian
tables laden with bottles of old French brandy, boxes of
Havana cigars, silver trays heaped with candied fruit, the
celebrated Wedel chocolates.
Frank invited Malaparte to his private study, with its rare
double loggias: one on the outside, overlooking the city, the
other internal, facing the castle’s laddered Renaissance
courtyard. At the center of the study was a vast mahogany
table, bare and polished in the candlelight, long gone by
the time I visited the room seven decades later.
“Here I think about Poland’s future,” Frank told
Malaparte.
The two men walked onto the external loggia, to admire
the city that lay below.
“This is the German burg,” Frank explained, pointing a
raised arm to a shadow of the Wawel, sharply cut into the
blinding reflection of the snow. Malaparte reported the
sound of barking dogs, a troop that guarded Marshal
Piłsudski in his tomb, deep below the castle.
That night was bitterly cold, so much so that tears came
to Malaparte’s eyes. They returned to the study and were
joined by Frau Brigitte Frank. She came to the Italian and
put her hand on his arm gently. “Come with me,” she said.
“I want to reveal his secret to you.” They passed through a
door at one end of the study, entering a small room with
bare, whitewashed walls. His own “Eagle’s Nest,” Brigitte
announced, a place of reflection and decision, empty save
for a Pleyel piano and a wooden music stool.
Frau Frank opened the piano and stroked the keyboard.
Malaparte noticed the fat fingers that so disgusted her
husband (by then, the marriage was in difficulty).
“Before taking a crucial decision, or when he is very
weary or depressed, sometimes in the very midst of an
important meeting,” she told the Italian, “he shuts himself
up in this cell, sits before the piano and seeks rest or
inspiration
from
Schumann,
Brahms,
Chopin
or
Beethoven.”
Malaparte was silent. “He is an extraordinary man, isn’t
he?” Frau Frank whispered, a look of pride and affection
crossing her harsh, greedy, adoring face. “He is an artist, a
great artist, with a pure and delicate soul,” she added.
“Only such an artist as he can rule over Poland.”
Frank didn’t perform that evening in Kraków. A few days
later, Malaparte was able to listen to him perform in
Warsaw, when the governor-general visited the city to meet
Himmler to discuss setbacks on the Russian front and
changes of personnel on his territory. Himmler and Frank
agreed that Otto von Wächter, the governor of Kraków,
would move to Lemberg, 180 miles to the south, to be
governor of Distrikt Galizien. He would replace Karl Lasch,
accused of corruption, rumored to be having an affair with
Frau Frank, and said by some to be the father of the infant
Niklas Frank.
95
IN OUR FIRST MEETING, Niklas Frank and I sat on the terrace
of the Hotel Jacob on the outskirts of Hamburg, overlooking
the river Elbe. It was early spring, and after a full day of
hearings in court—Hamburg was home to the International
Tribunal for the Law of the Sea—we were under the canopy
of a sweet-smelling tree, with a bottle of Riesling and a
generous plate of German cheeses.
Niklas was seventy-three, with a bearded, vulnerable
face, recognizable from the childhood photographs. He had
the air of an academic, kindly gentle but also steely, with
his own temperament and agenda. Niklas was three when
Malaparte visited the Wawel in the spring of 1942, so he
didn’t remember the Italian but knew what he wrote of his
father. I learned this from the book Niklas wrote in the
1980s, the catalyst for our meeting. For many years a
journalist with Stern magazine, in 1987 he published Der
Vater (The Father), an unforgiving, merciless attack on his
father, a work that broke a taboo that directed the children
of senior Nazis to honor their parents (and not spill too
many beans). An abridged version was published in English
with the title In the Shadow of the Reich, although Niklas
told me he was unhappy with the translation and certain
sections that were left out. I found a copy on the Web—ten
pence (fifteen cents), plus postage—and read it over a
weekend. Later I located the translator—Arthur Wensinger,
professor emeritus of German language and literature at
Wesleyan University—who introduced me to Niklas. In yet
another odd coincidence, it turned out that Niklas Frank’s
translator had spent the war years at Phillips Academy in
Andover, where he was a classmate of Eli Lauterpacht.
Credit 95.1
Niklas Frank with parents, the Wawel, 1941
Niklas and I met a few weeks later in Hamburg. I liked
him from the outset, a generous man with a good sense of
humor and a sharp tongue. He spoke of a childhood in
Kraków and Warsaw, of life at the Wawel Castle, of the
challenges of having had a father like Hans Frank. When,
as a journalist in the early 1990s, he traveled to Warsaw to
interview Lech Walesa, newly elected as president of
Poland, they met at the Belvedere Palace, in the same room
where Malaparte had watched Frank play the piano.
“I remembered running around the table, my father on
the opposite side. My only wish was to be embraced by
him. I was crying, because he kept on calling me fremdi”—
stranger—“as though I was not a member of the family.
‘You don’t belong to this family,’ my father told me, and I
wept.” I must have looked puzzled, so Niklas offered an
explanation.
“Only later did I learn that my father believed I was not
his son but the son of his best friend, Karl Lasch, the
governor of Galicia; he was for a short time my mother’s
lover.” Niklas eventually learned what had happened from
his mother’s letters and diaries. “She was a true writer,” he
explained, “always writing down conversations, including
the one she had with my father when Lasch was shot.”
(Accused of corruption, Lasch was removed from his
position as governor of Galicia in the spring of 1942, to be
succeeded by Otto von Wächter, and was either executed or
committed suicide.)
In fact, Brigitte Frank’s letters made clear that Frank was
Niklas’s father. Years later, the truth was confirmed when
Niklas visited Helene Winter (née Kraffczyk), who was
Frank’s personal secretary in the Wawel years. “As I
approached her house, I noticed a tiny movement of the
curtain. Later I asked, ‘Frau Winter, do I look like Mr.
Lasch?’ ” Frau Winter’s face turned pale. It was true—she
wondered whether he would resemble Frank or Lasch, but
was relieved that the likeness was to Frank.
“She loved my father; she was in love with him.” Niklas
paused, then said with a blunt finality that I had come to
enjoy, “They had sex together; she was a very nice woman.”
Niklas’s feelings toward his father and members of his
family had not warmed over the years. Frank’s sister Lily
traded off the family connections. “She liked to go to the
Płaszów concentration camp,” Niklas explained, close to
Kraków, where they lived. “After the Kraków ghetto was
demolished, thousands of the Jews went to Auschwitz,
others to Płaszow. Our aunt Lily went to them at Płaszów
and said, ‘I am the sister of the governor-general; if you
have some precious thing to give me, I can save your life.’ ”
How did he know? I asked. “My mother’s letters,” he
replied.
Niklas thought that Brigitte Frank had good relations
with Jews until 1933. Even after the Nazis took over, she
continued to trade with them, buying and selling furs and
baubles of the kind that her new status required. “The first
months after they took power she was still dealing with the
Jews.” This upset his father. “You can’t do this,” he would
say. “I am minister of justice and you are dealing with Jews,
and I will throw them all out.”
What of his relationship with his father? Niklas recalled
but a single moment of affection, which occurred at the
Wawel Castle, in his father’s bathroom, near the sunken
bath.
“I was standing beside him; he was shaving. Suddenly he
put some foam on my nose.” Niklas said this wistfully. “It
was the only private, intime moment I remember.”
Later Niklas and I visited the Wawel Castle, toured
Frank’s private apartments, the family rooms, the
bathroom. We stood before the mirror as Niklas showed me
how his father bent over toward him, putting a spot of
shaving foam on the tip of his nose.
“It hasn’t changed,” Niklas said, admiring the sunken
bath next to his father’s bedroom. Above the door, carved
into the sixteenth-century stone lintel, we read the words
inscribed into the stone, Tendit in ardua virtus. “Courage in
hard times.”
96
MALAPARTE HAD ANOTHER DINNER with Frank, this time in
Warsaw at the Brühl Palace, which he’d previously visited
in 1919, when the new Polish premier, Ignacy Paderewski,
performed Chopin preludes. Now Malaparte sat on a sofa in
one of the palace’s private rooms, recalling Paderewski’s
ghostly face, bathed in tears. What a difference a quarter of
a century made! Frank now played, seated at a piano, face
bowed, forehead pale and damp with sweat. Malaparte
observed the expression of suffering on the governorgeneral’s “proud” features, heard his labored breath, saw
him bite his lip. Frank’s eyes were closed, eyelids trembling
with emotion. “A sick man,” Malaparte thought. On this
occasion, the pure, seditious notes of a Chopin prelude
flowed from the hands of the German. Malaparte claimed to
feel a sense of shame, of rebellion.
This account did not appear in the articles Malaparte
wrote for Corriere della Sera in 1942. Rather, it was taken
from his novel Kaputt, published in 1946, by which time
Frank’s fortunes had turned. In this version, which might
or might not have been accurate, Malaparte observed Frau
Brigitte Frank seated close to her husband, a ball of
knitting wool in her lap.
“Oh, he plays like an angel!” the queen of Poland
whispered.
The music ceased; Frank came over to them. Brigitte
tossed away the ball of wool and made for her husband’s
side, took his hand, and kissed it. Malaparte expected Frau
Brigitte to kneel in worship, but instead she raised Frank’s
hands and turned toward the guests.
“Look!” she said in triumph. “Look at the way the hands
of angels are made!”
Malaparte saw Frank’s hands, small, delicate, and white,
quite unlike his wife’s.
“I was surprised and relieved not to see a single drop of
blood on them,” he wrote in the pages of the novel, at a
time when it was safe to put such thoughts on paper.
At the Belvedere Palace, Frank’s Warsaw home,
Malaparte attended a lunch in honor of Max Schmeling, the
German boxer who knocked out Joe Louis in the twelfth
round of their June 1936 fight in Yankee Stadium. Frank
wanted to get things off his chest.
“Mein lieber Malaparte,” Malaparte’s novel reported
Frank as stating, “the German people are the victim of an
abominable slander. We are not a race of murderers…Your
duty, as an honest and impartial man, is to tell the truth.
You will be able to say with a clear conscience that the
Germans in Poland are a great, peaceful and active family…
That’s what Poland is—an honest German home.”
What of the Jews? Malaparte asked.
“Just think!” exclaimed Ludwig Fischer, the governor of
Warsaw. “More than one and a half million Jews are now
living in the same space where three hundred thousand
people lived before the war.”
“Jews like to live like that,” Frank’s press chief, Emil
Gassner, exclaimed, laughing.
“We cannot force them to live differently,” Frank
explained.
“It would be contrary to the Law of Nations,” Malaparte
suggested, with a smile.
Frank recognized that the space in Warsaw where the
Jews were housed might be a little confined, yet the “filth”
in which they lived was a natural habitat.
“It’s sad that they die like rats,” he added, realizing such
words were apt to be misunderstood. He clarified that that
was “merely a statement of fact.”
The conversation turned to the subject of children.
“What is the children’s death rate in the Warsaw ghetto?”
Governor Fischer was asked.
“Fifty-four percent,” Frank interrupted, with notable
precision. The Jews were degenerates; they didn’t know
how to care for children, not like the Germans. Still, a bad
impression existed outside Poland, and it needed to be
addressed.
“If one believed British and American newspapers, the
Germans would appear to do nothing else in Poland but kill
Jews from morning till night,” he continued. “In spite of
this, you have been in Poland for over a month, and you
cannot say that you have seen a single hair pulled out of a
Jewish head.”
Malaparte did not record a response as Frank raised a
Bohemian crystal glass of deep red Türkischblut.
“You may drink without fear, my dear Malaparte, this is
not Jewish blood. Prosit!”
Talk turned to the nearby Warsaw ghetto.
“Inside the ghettos they enjoyed the most complete
freedom,” Frank explained. “I persecute no one.”
Nor did he kill anyone.
“To kill Jews is not the German method.” Such actions
would be a waste of time and strength. “We deport them to
Poland and shut them up in ghettos. There they are free to
do what they like. Within the Polish ghettos, they live as in
a free republic.”
Then Frank had an idea.
“Have you been to see the ghetto, my dear Malaparte?”
97
I BOUGHT A COPY of the first edition of Kaputt in Italian, which
made clear that the English translation followed the
original text, where Malaparte offered a full account of the
supposed visit to the Warsaw ghetto. Although I had come
to learn that the words of Curzio Malaparte were not to be
taken at face value, the account of the outing is worth
recording. Malaparte records his departure from the
Belvedere Palace, sitting in the first car with Frau Wächter
and Governor-General Frank, followed by a second car
occupied by Frau Frank and Max Schmeling, with other
guests in two more cars. At the entrance to the “Forbidden
City,” in front of a gate in the redbrick wall the Germans
had built around the ghetto, the cars stopped and they all
got out.
“See this wall?” said Frank to me. “Does it look to you like the
terrible concrete wall bristling with machine guns that the British
and American papers write about?” And he added, smiling, “The
wretched Jews all have weak chests. At any rate this wall protects
them against the wind”…
“And still,” said Frank laughing, “although leaving the ghetto is
punishable by death, the Jews go in and out as they please.”
“Over the wall?”
“Oh, no,” replied Frank, “they go out through rat holes that they
dig by night under the wall and that they cover up by day with a
little earth and leaves. They crawl through those holes and go into
the city to purchase food and clothing. The black market in the
ghetto is carried on mainly through such holes. From time to time
one of the rats is caught in a trap; they are children not over eight
or nine years old. They risk their lives in a true sporting spirit, that
is cricket too, nicht wahr?”
“They risk their lives?” I shouted.
“Basically,” replied Frank, “they risk nothing else.”
“And you call that cricket?”
“Certainly. Every game has its set of rules.”
“In Cracow,” said Frau Wächter, “my husband has built a wall of
an Eastern design with elegant curves and graceful battlements.
The Cracow Jews certainly have nothing to complain about. An
elegant wall in the Jewish style.”
They all laughed as they stamped their feet on the frozen snow.
“Ruhe—Silence!” called a soldier who was kneeling concealed
behind a mound of snow a few feet away from us with his rifle
against his shoulder. Another soldier, kneeling behind him, peered
over the shoulder of his companion who suddenly fired. The bullet
hit the wall just at the edge of a hole. “Missed!” remarked the
soldier gaily, slipping another cartridge into the barrel.
Frank walked over to the two soldiers and asked them what they
were firing at.
“At a rat,” they replied laughing loudly.
“At a rat? Ach, so!” said Frank, kneeling and looking over the
men’s shoulders.
We also came closer, and the ladies laughed and squealed lifting
their skirt up to the knees as women do when they hear anything
about mice.
“Where is it? Where is the rat?” asked Frau Brigitte Frank.
“It is in the trap,” said Frank laughing.
“Achtung! Look out!” said the soldier aiming. A black tuft of
tangled hair popped out of the hole dug under the wall; then two
hands appeared and rested on the snow.
It was a child.
Another shot and again the bullet missed its mark by a few
inches.
The child’s head disappeared.
“Hand me the rifle,” said Frank in an impatient voice. “You don’t
know how to handle it.” He grabbed the rifle out of the soldier’s
hand and took aim. It snowed silently.
This was a ghetto visit as social occasion, accompanied
by wives and friends and maybe children. I thought of
Sasha Krawec, the young man who spent six months hidden
in Elsie Tilney’s room in Vittel, one of Frank’s escaped rats.
I asked Niklas about Malaparte’s account, the supposed
visit to the Warsaw ghetto. Could Frank have taken a gun
and aimed it at a Jew?
He confirmed that his mother did read Kaputt. “I have
this memory of her on the sofa, very angry about
Malaparte’s book. He wrote that my father had very long
fingers; they were really long. Or was he writing about my
mother’s fingers?”
“Your father’s fingers,” I said. Malaparte described
Brigitte’s fingers as fat. Niklas nodded, then smiled his
toothy smile. “My mother was agitated, moving around,
really upset. ‘It’s not true,’ she said. ‘He never killed any
Jews, not personally.’ This comforted her, a point in his
favor; he didn’t kill anyone ‘personally.’ ”
“Personally”?
So the visit to the ghetto did take place?
“We all visited the ghettos,” Niklas said quietly, with
shame. He remembered a visit, maybe to the Kraków
ghetto, the one built by Wächter. “My brother Norman
visited the Warsaw ghetto, my sister Sigrid visited the
Kraków ghetto. I visited the Kraków ghetto with my
mother.” Later he shared with me a copy of a home movie
prepared for his father, with the title “Kraków.”
Interspersed into the family scenes and images of Frank at
work were a few moments in the ghetto. In one short
scene, the camera lingers on a girl in a red dress.
Looking straight into the camera, she smiles, a beautiful
long, hopeful smile that has remained with me. So did the
red dress, an image picked up by the director Steven
Spielberg in the film Schindler’s List. Same ghetto, same
dress, fiction, fact. Could Spielberg have seen this film,
which Niklas told me was not in the public domain, or was
it just another coincidence?
Credit 97.1
—
I asked Niklas whether his father and Malaparte might
have visited the Warsaw ghetto together.
“It could be,” Niklas said. “I don’t believe that he
personally killed any Jews, and my mother certainly didn’t
believe that. That is what made her so agitated, the book.”
Yet within the family a difference emerged on this
important matter. Niklas’s older brother Norman, now
dead, disagreed with the mother’s recollection.
“Norman visited the ghetto with Schamper,” Niklas
added, referring to his father’s chauffeur. “He told me he
could imagine that our father took a gun from a soldier.”
98
BY THE SUMMER of 1942, Frank had enemies in high places
and needed to be on his guard. In June and July, he
delivered four big speeches on the rule of law and its
importance. They were directed against Himmler, who was
by now actively engaged in leading the plans to
exterminate the Jews and with whom he was in open
conflict on the exercise of power on occupied Polish
territory. Frank stressed the need for a legal system that
recognized a rule of law, with proper courts and
independent judges. Speaking at the great universities in
Berlin, Vienna, Heidelberg, and Munich, he was responding
to pressure from senior judges, concerned that justice in
the Reich was being undermined. Frank wanted a Reich
under the law.
“The legal mind will always recognize that war takes
precedence over everything else,” he told the audience in
Berlin on June 9. Nevertheless, even in times of war there
must be legal security, because people needed a “sense of
justice.” There was a striking absence of irony, given the
actions he was overseeing in Poland. He had his own ideas
about justice, organized around two distinct themes,
“authoritarian governance,” on the one hand, and “judicial
independence,” on the other. The law must be
authoritarian, but it had to be applied by independent
judges.
The four speeches were not well received by Himmler,
who complained to Hitler. Perhaps Frank should have been
more judicious in his choice of words. A strong reaction
against the speeches was not long in coming. First he was
questioned by the Gestapo, then, on a visit to the
Schoberhof, he received a personal telephone call from
Hitler, who told him he was stripped of all his roles, bar
one.
“Brigitte, the Führer has left me the Government
General,” he told his wife. Frau Frank was relieved he kept
his position, according to Niklas.
If Frank had real concerns about the direction of the
Reich, which Niklas doubted, they were as nothing
compared with the other problem in his life. Politics took
second place to matters of the heart: Lilly Grau reemerged
unexpectedly from the past, the childhood sweetheart he
had wanted to marry. She arrived in the form of a letter,
telling Frank that her only son was missing on the Russian
front. Could he help? The request provoked a strong
reaction and an overwhelming desire. He visited Lilly at
her home in Bad Aibling in Bavaria, the first time they’d
seen each other in nearly two decades.
“Immediately we burst into uncontrollable flame,” he
recorded in his diary. “We were reunited once more, so
passionately that now there is no turning back.” A week
later, they met in Munich, Frank managing to escape from
Kraków for long enough to give her a day and a night of
personal attention. “A solemn and transfigured reunion of
two human beings who ignited one another and whom
nothing could restrain for long,” he wrote. The passage
made me laugh out loud when I first read it.
Frank decided to extricate himself from a loveless
marriage with Brigitte to be with Lilly. A week after the
Munich conflagration, he concocted the most original and
terrible of plans to free himself from Brigitte, invoking the
decisions taken at the Wannsee Conference to get himself a
divorce. As Malke Buchholz prepared to be transported to
Treblinka, as the Lauterpachts were rounded up in
Lemberg and the Lemkins herded out of the Wołkowysk
ghetto, Hans Frank invoked matters of that kind to tell his
wife that he was deeply implicated in criminal actions
—“the most gruesome things”—and that she should
distance herself from him to protect herself. He gave her
the details of a matter that was secret and terrible, to be
known as the Final Solution. The horror offered a path to
personal happiness, a way out of daily life with an
overbearing, greedy wife. To save herself from association
with the governor-general, he was willing to offer her “the
greatest sacrifice,” a divorce, so she could avoid being
tainted by the Final Solution. Mass extermination offered a
path to Lilly and happiness.
Brigitte Frank did not take the bait, any more than Hitler
or Himmler were willing to accept the ideas Frank had set
out in his four speeches. The queen of Poland enjoyed an
opulent lifestyle of castles and guards, and she wasn’t
about to throw it away. She preferred to take the risk, pay
the price, hang on. “I prefer to be the widow of a
Reichsminister than a divorced wife!” she told her
husband. Niklas shared the details, set out in black and
white in her diary. Hans has told me the “most gruesome
things,” Brigitte wrote, matters not to be talked about
openly. One day she might share them, “details later but
only in private.”
A few days later, Frank changed direction. He summoned
Brigitte into the music room at the Wawel Castle to tell her
that Karl Lasch had shot himself. She was surprised by her
husband’s reaction. “He declares that the divorce is now no
longer necessary,” she recorded. The evening was
“harmonious,”
the
change
of
direction
“totally
incomprehensible.”
The roller-coaster summer wasn’t over. Two weeks later,
Frank again asked to end the marriage, blaming Brigitte
for his unhappiness. “Someone had told him I was not a
good National Socialist,” she wrote, “and he made it look as
if they had advised him to get divorced.”
Credit 98.1
The next day all was fine again. Frank brought her an
item of jewelry, a talisman to compensate for the suffering
he’d caused. But within a month, he had changed direction
again, renewing the demand for an immediate divorce.
“There is nothing physical left between us,” he told
Brigitte. His needs were being taken care of by Lilly (and
apparently also by another lady, named Gertrude).
Brigitte maintained an admirable composure through this
difficult period, perhaps because her control over Frank
was total. According to Niklas, she wrote to Hitler, begging
him to intercede to prevent a divorce. She sent the führer a
photograph of the happy family, a matriarch protective of
her three sons and two daughters, a true and model Nazi
family.
The photograph must have helped. Hitler intervened to
forbid Frank to divorce. Brigitte Frank had quite a hold
over her husband. “My father loved the führer more than
he loved his family,” Niklas explained with a chuckle.
99
THIS WAS the personal turmoil that engulfed Frank as he
traveled to Lemberg in the summer of 1942. He controlled
the territory of Galicia but not his wife or emotions, and
certainly not his physical impulses.
It was the anniversary of Lemberg’s incorporation into
the General Government as the capital of a newly
Germanized Distrikt Galizien. He arrived on the morning of
Friday, July 31, following a three-day tour that began in
Tarnopol, looped southward to Chortkiv and Zalischyky,
then east to Kosiv and Yaremche. The final leg, a short
northeasterly hop, was to the City of Lions. Frank traveled
by armored car and train, in the face of constant rumors
about attacks. The Gazeta Lwowska reported that in his
presence the faces of his new subjects “shine with
happiness” and many of his subjects voiced gratitude:
children offered flowers; women passed bouquets of roses,
baskets of bread, salt, and fruit.
Lemberg was now firmly under German control. Frank’s
main task was to restore civilian rule under the firm hand
of Governor Otto von Wächter, who had replaced Lasch a
few weeks earlier. Frank had plans for the city, following
the eviction of the Soviets. Embroiled in major policy
differences with Himmler, Frank wanted to be fully
involved in all the key decisions. The more oversight and
responsibility he had, the more he would be recognized as
leader. To this end, he applied a principle of “unity in
administration,” as he had explained to party leaders in
Kraków. Astride this pyramid of power, he described
himself as “fanatic.” “The Higher SS and Police Leader is
subordinated to me, the Police is a component of the
Government, the SS and Police Leader in the district is
subordinated to the Governor.” Frank was at the pinnacle,
Wächter one stone down.
The point was simple. Within the General Government,
Frank was deemed to know everything, to be responsible
for all actions. He received reports on all activities,
including those of the Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police
and of the SD. He was copied on all key documents.
Knowing all, he was responsible for all, believing that
power would last forever without accountability.
—
His train pulled in to the main railway station in Lemberg,
from which Lauterpacht and Lemkin had departed. It was
nine o’clock in the morning when he joined his colleague
Otto von Wächter, governor of Galicia, tall and blond, with
a military bearing, an impeccably good-looking Nazi
compared with Frank. Church bells rang; a military
orchestra played. The two men traveled together, from
station to city center, through streets decorated with flags
of the Reich, past Leon’s first home, past Lemkin’s student
accommodations, close to where Lauterpacht lived.
Schoolchildren lined Opernstrasse (Operowa Street),
waving little flags as Frank entered the main square in
front of the opera house, now renamed Adolf-Hitler-Platz.
Credit 99.1
Lemberg Opera House, on Frank’s visit, August 1942
That evening, Frank inaugurated a newly refurbished
theater, the “sanctuary of art” that was the Skarbek
Theater. He stood proudly before an audience of
dignitaries, introducing them to Beethoven and Fritz
Weidlich, a little-known conductor who would fade into
Austrian obscurity after the war. Frank had wanted Karajan
to conduct, or Furtwängler, a reminder of a marvelous
evening in February 1937 when he attended the
Philharmonic Hall in Berlin in the presence of a radiant
führer. The Berlin concert produced moments of
indescribable emotion, a memory that caused him to
“shiver in the ecstasy of youth, strength, hope and
gratitude,” he wrote in his diary.
This evening he spoke with equal passion, standing in the
middle of the orchestra. “We, the Germans, do not go to
foreign lands with opium and similar measures like the
English,” he declared. “We bring art and culture to other
nations,” and music that reflected the immortal nation of
the German Volk. They made do with Weidlich, who opened
with Beethoven’s Leonore Overture no. 3, op. 72, followed
by the Ninth Symphony, to which the Lviv Opera choir
added their voices.
100
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Saturday, August 1, Frank attended
events to mark the anniversary of the incorporation of
Distrikt Galizien into the General Government, held at the
Opera House and in the Great Hall of the former
parliament of Galicia. Seven decades later, when the
university invited me to give a lecture about that ceremony,
I spoke in the same room, standing before a photograph of
Frank as he delivered one of his speeches, celebrating the
transfer of power from military to civilian government, now
under the control of Wächter.
When Frank spoke, the university building was draped in
red, white, and black flags. To get to the Great Hall, Frank
ascended the central staircase and walked to a seat at the
center of the stage. He was introduced, moved to a wooden
lectern garlanded in leaves, under an eagle astride a
swastika. The room was packed, the speech praised in the
Gazeta Lwowska as announcing the return of civilization to
the city. “European rules of social order” were coming
home to Lemberg. Frank thanked Governor Wächter for
“superb leadership” after two years as governor of Kraków.
“I came here to thank you and express gratitude on behalf
of the Führer and the Reich,” Frank told Wächter, who sat
on the raised platform, to his right.
Credit 100.1
Frank, Great Hall, August i, 1942
Frank told the audience of party leaders that Hitler’s
anti-Semitism was justified, that Galicia was the “primeval
source of the Jewish world.” Control of Lemberg and its
environs allowed him to deal with the core of the Jewish
problem.
“We appreciate what the Führer has given us with his gift
of the district of Galicia, and I am not talking here about its
Jews,” he shouted, once more too loudly. “Yes, we still have
some of them around but will take care of that.” He was a
fine orator, no doubt about that, able to keep the audience’s
attention.
“Incidentally,” he said, pausing for dramatic effect,
addressing his words to Otto von Wächter, “I don’t seem to
have any of that trash hanging around here today. What’s
going on? They tell me that there were thousands and
thousands of those flat-footed primitives in this city once
upon a time— but there hasn’t been a single one to be seen
since I arrived.” The audience erupted into applause. Frank
had the answer to the question. The entrance to the
Lemberg ghetto was no more than a few hundred meters
from the lectern at which he spoke. That he knew, because
his administration prepared the map “Umsiedlung der
Juden” (Resettlement of the Jews) just a year earlier, with
the ghetto’s seven districts in which all the city’s Jews
lived. His decree meant that to set foot outside the ghetto
without permission was punishable by death.
He didn’t know exactly who was in that ghetto, although
he knew how to whip up the audience.
“Don’t tell me that you’ve been treating them badly?” he
said. Have people finally got outraged by them? Frank told
the audience that he was solving the Jewish question. No
more would they be able to travel to Germany. The message
was clear, his words met by “lively applause.”
Later that evening, he spent time with Frau Charlotte von
Wächter, the wife of the governor. She passed a
considerable part of the day with Frank, as she recorded in
her diary:
Frank came for breakfast at nine o’clock and went away
immediately with Otto. [I] should have come but didn’t. I am home
with Miss Wickl. Afterward, I slept deeply. Very tired. At four
o’clock…[I was sent] to Frank, who wanted to play chess again. I
won two times. After that he angrily went to bed. Then he came
back and drove away immediately.
The diary made no mention of the day’s other
developments, the decisions taken by her husband under
the watchful eye of Governor-General Frank and soon
implemented.
101
A WEEK AFTER Frank’s visit, the great Lemberg roundup
began. Die grosse Aktion began early in the morning of
Monday, August 10, gathering up many of the remaining
Jews in the ghetto and outside, holding them in a school
playground before they were taken to the Janowska camp
in the city center. “A lot had to be done in Lemberg,”
Governor Wächter wrote to his wife on August 16, referring
in one line to the “grosse Aktion against the Jews” and in
another to games of Ping-Pong played “with great
enthusiasm.” Heinrich Himmler arrived in Lemberg on
August 17 to confer with Governor Wächter and Odilo
Globocnik, responsible for the construction of the death
camp at Belzec, fifty miles to the northeast. Over dinner at
Wächter’s home, conversation addressed the future of the
Jews of Lemberg and surrounding areas, including Żółkiew.
Within two weeks, more than fifty thousand people were on
the railway line heading to Belzec.
Among the thousands caught up in die grosse Aktion was
Lauterpacht’s family. His young niece Inka watched from a
window as her mother was taken, a moment recalled years
later, the clarity of a dress and high-heeled shoes.
Lauterpacht’s parents and the rest of his extended family
were also taken. Most likely this was when my
grandfather’s Lemberg family was extinguished, among
them Uncle Leibus, along with his wife and children. All
that remained was a congratulatory wedding telegram sent
to Leon and Rita in 1937.
As these events unfolded, the Krakauer Zeitung reported
another speech by Frank, announcing the “real success” of
his administration. “One now sees hardly any Jews,” Frank
declared, in Lemberg or in Kraków or in any of the other
cities or towns or villages or hamlets under his control.
102
KNOWING MY INTEREST in Lemberg, Niklas Frank mentioned
that he was acquainted with the son of Otto von Wächter,
the governor of Distrikt Galizien who had been a classmate
of Lauterpacht’s at the University of Vienna in 1919. Horst
took “a rather different attitude to mine,” Niklas explained,
on matters of paternal responsibility. Niklas added that the
approach wasn’t unusual, that Goebbels’s daughter “never
did want to speak with me after I wrote my book.”
Niklas procured an invitation from Horst von Wächter for
us to visit him at Schloss Hagenberg, the imposing
seventeenth-century castle where he lives, an hour north of
Vienna. Built around an enclosed courtyard, the Baroque
Schloss stood four stories high, a foreboding and
impenetrable stone structure that has seen better days.
Horst and his wife, Jacqueline, occupied a few sparsely
furnished rooms. I liked amicable, gentle Horst, a
generously proportioned man in a pink shirt and sandals,
bespectacled, gray hair, and, judging by a photograph of his
father, the same broad smile. He was engaging and
friendly, captured (or maybe imprisoned?) by the faded
glory of the Schloss bought a quarter of a century earlier
with a small inheritance. Because there was no central
heating, the bitter cold of midwinter was barely kept at bay
by a wood-burning fire under crumbling Baroque cornice
work and the fading paint of its walls.
In one room, under the rafters that support the towering
roof, Horst kept his father’s library, the “National Socialist
department” of the family’s history. He invited me to look
around. I picked a book at random from the tightly stacked
shelf. The first page contained a handwritten dedication in
a small, neat German script. To SS-Gruppenführer Dr. Otto
Wächter, “with my best wishes on your birthday.” The deep
blue signature, slightly smudged, was unforgiving. “H.
Himmler, 8 July 1944.”
My shock at the signature was heightened by the context:
this book was a family heirloom, not a museum artifact,
offered to Horst’s father as a token of appreciation. For
services rendered. It was a direct line between Horst’s
family and the Nazi leadership of Germany. (On a later visit,
I picked out a copy of Mein Kampf, a gift from his mother
to his father while they were courting. “I didn’t know that
was there,” Horst said with obvious pleasure.)
Credit 102.1
“A.H.” with Heinrich Hoffmann and unknown man, undated, ca. 1932
(from Otto von Wächter’s album)
In the room he used as a study, Horst had gathered a few
family albums. He was equally comfortable with these
pages, which held the stuff of normal family life: images of
children and grandparents, ski holidays, boating trips,
birthday
parties.
But
interspersed
among
these
unsurprising images were other photographs. August 1931,
an unknown man chiseled at a swastika carved into a wall;
an undated photograph of a man departing a building
under a line of arms raised in Nazi salute, with the caption
“Dr. Goebbels”; three men in conversation in a covered
railway yard, undated, with the initials “A.H.” I looked more
closely. The man at the center was Hitler, and next to him
the photographer Heinrich Hoffmann, who introduced
Hitler to Eva Braun. The third man I didn’t recognize.
Horst said, “It may be Baldur von Schirach; it’s not my
father.” I was less sure.
I turned the pages. Vienna, autumn 1938. Wächter in
uniform at his desk in the Hofburg Palace, pensive,
examining papers. A date was written on the page,
November 9, 1938. Kristallnacht began a few hours later.
Another page: Poland, late 1939 or early 1940, images of
burned-out buildings and refugees. At the center of the
page, a small, square photograph shows an anxious group.
They might be in a ghetto. According to Malaparte’s
account, Wächter’s wife, Charlotte, appreciated the wall of
the Kraków ghetto, with its Eastern design of “elegant
curves and graceful battlements,” offered to the Jews,
according to Frau Wächter, as a place of comfort (the
photograph turned out to have been taken in the Warsaw
ghetto, near 35 Nowolipie Street, close to a small passage
that led toward a marketplace).
The group includes a young boy and an old woman,
dressed against the cold. A white armband draws my eye,
identifying its bearer, an old lady in a head scarf, as a Jew.
A few feet behind her, at the center of the image, a boy
looks directly into the camera, toward the photographer,
most likely Wächter’s wife, Charlotte, on a visit to the
ghetto of the kind reported by Malaparte. She studied with
the architect Josef Hoffmann’s Wiener Werkstätte and had
a good eye for a line.
The pages of these family albums held other notable
images. The Wächters with Hans Frank. Wächter with his
Waffen-SS Galician Division. Wächter with Himmler in
Lemberg. They placed Otto von Wächter at the heart of
German operations, personal mementos of international
crime committed on a great scale. Their implications were
inescapable, although Horst seemed unwilling to recognize
them.
Credit 102.2
Street scene, Warsaw ghetto, ca. 1940 (from Otto von Wachter’s album)
Horst was born in 1939, like Niklas, with only a limited
recollection of his father, who was often away. The attitude
he adopted to his father, a political leader indicted for war
crimes by the Polish government in exile, differed from that
taken by Niklas, as he struggled to come to terms with
Otto’s legacy.
“I must find the good in my father,” he said in one of our
first conversations. He was on a mission of rehabilitation,
against the odds and the facts. Our tentative exchanges
grew more comfortable. “My father was a good man, a
liberal who did his best,” Horst said, digging deep for
belief. “Others would have been worse.”
He gave me a detailed biographical record of his father,
with many footnotes. “I’ll study it.”
“Of course,” Horst said quickly. “Then you will come
back.”
103
IN THE MIDST of the killing, and still worrying about his
marriage, Frank found the time to implement another
bright idea: he invited the famous Baedeker publishing
company to produce a travel guide for the General
Government to encourage visitors. In October 1942, Frank
wrote a short introduction, which I read in a copy obtained
from an antiquarian bookseller in Berlin. The familiar red
cover of a book that contained a large pullout map showing
the outer limits of Frank’s territory, etched in light blue.
Within that border, Lemberg was on the east, Kraków to
the west, Warsaw to the north. The borders enclose the
camps of Treblinka, Belzec, Majdanek, and Sobibor.
“For those coming to the Reich from the East,” Frank
wrote in the introduction, “the General Government is the
first glimpse of a structure offering a strong impression of
home.” For visitors arriving from the west, traveling out of
the Reich, his lands offered a “first greeting from an
Eastern world.”
Karl Baedeker added a few personal words to thank
Frank, the inspiration behind this happy new addition to
the Baedeker collection. Preparation was overseen by
Oskar Steinheil, who visited the area in the autumn of
1942, with the personal support of the governor-general.
What did Herr Steinheil see but decide to leave out as he
traveled around by car and rail? Baedeker hoped the book
might “convey” an impression of the tremendous work of
organization and construction accomplished by Frank “in
the difficult wartime conditions of the past 3½ years.”
The visitor would benefit from great improvements, the
province and cities having “acquired a different
appearance,” German culture and architecture once more
accessible. Maps and city plans were modernized, names
Germanized, all in accordance with Frank’s decrees. The
reader learned that the General Government had an area of
142,000 square kilometers (37 percent of the former Polish
territory) and was home to eighteen million people (72
percent Polish, 17 percent Ukrainian [Ruthenian], and 0.7
percent German). A million or more Jews had been erased
(“free of Jews” was the formulation used for various towns
and cities). The attentive reader might have noted the odd
error, including the reference to the fact that Warsaw’s
population used to comprise 400,000 Jews, now
disappeared.
Lemberg got eight pages (and a two-page map), Żółkiew
just one, although it was a town “worth seeing,” for its
Germanic seventeenth-century heritage. The Ringplatz
(Ring Square) was “characteristically German”; the
Baroque Dominican church (dating to 1655) and the Roman
Catholic church (rebuilt in 1677) had paintings by a
German artist. German tourists would be reassured by the
presence of nearby German settlements. The only place of
worship in Żółkiew not mentioned in the guide was the
seventeenth-century synagogue, gutted by the fire of June
1941. Nor did the guide make any mention of the Żółkiew
Jews or the ghetto in which they lived when the guide was
published. Within six months of publication, almost all of
them had been murdered.
The volume offered no hint as to the uses to which the
“densely wooded” areas around Żółkiew were put or any
information on the myriad concentration camps dotted
around Frank’s territory. The editors offered a passing
mention of the connections that Belzec’s train station offers
to the rest of Galicia and a fleeting reference to the small
town of Auschwitz, located on Reichstrasse No. 391, the
main route between Warsaw and Kraków.
104
THE PUBLICATION OF the Baedeker guide coincided with a
different kind of account, one that appeared in The New
York Times under the headline “Poland Indicts 10 in
400,000 Deaths.” The piece identified a group described as
the “unholy ten,” leading members of the General
Government indicted as war criminals by the Polish
government in exile. “German Governor is No. 1.”
This was a reference to Frank, whose crimes were said to
include the execution of 200,000 Poles, the transfer of
hundreds of thousands more to Germany, and the creation
of the ghettos. Otto von Wächter came in at No. 7, although
wrongly identified as “J. Waechter,” the governor of Kraków
(a position he’d left in March 1942, when he was
transferred to Lemberg). Wächters specialty was described
as “the extermination of the Polish intelligentsia.”
I sent a copy of the article to Horst von Wächter, who
asked to see anything I came across that mentioned his
father’s activities in Poland. His first reaction was to point
out the errors. The article treated all of Frank’s deputy
governors “as criminals evenly,” Horst complained, as did
the Poles. He invited me to return to Hagenberg without
Niklas, accompanied by a photographer. We talked about
events in Lemberg in August 1942. One account was
written by the Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, who claims
personally to have seen Wächter in the Lemberg ghetto
early in 1942 and asserts that the governor was “personally
in charge” when his mother was separated from him and
sent to her death on August 15, 1942. Horst was skeptical,
saying that his father wasn’t in Lemberg on the day in
question. Later I found a photograph of Wächter with Frank
at Wawel Castle, taken on August 16, the day after
Wiesenthal claimed to have seen Wächter in the Lemberg
ghetto.
—
These events continued to have consequences, much later
and at great distances. I told Horst about a judgment
handed down in March 2007 by a U.S. federal judge,
stripping one John Kalymon, a resident of Michigan, of his
U.S. citizenship. The judge ruled that Kalymon was serving
as a Ukrainian auxiliary policeman in August 1942, in the
grosse Aktion, that he was directly involved in the killing of
Jews. The judgment relies on an expert report prepared by
a German academic, Professor Dieter Pohl, which made a
few references to Wächter. Pohl’s report led me to other
documents at the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington,
three of which implicated Wächter directly in the events of
1942. I showed them to Horst, as he had requested.
Credit 104.1
Wawel Castle, Kraków, August 16, 1942, Frank (first left) and Wächter
(fourth left)
The first was a note of a meeting held in Lemberg in
January 1942, just before Wächter arrived, titled
“Deportation of Jews from Lemberg.” It heralded a one-way
trip to Belzec and the gas chambers in March. “If feasible,
the term ‘resettlement’ is to be avoided,” the document
noted, attentive to the nuances of language and truth.
Wächter must have known of their fate.
The second document was an order of March 1942 signed
by Wächter. Intended to restrict the employment of Jews
throughout Galicia, it was issued two days before the first
ghetto operation (March 15), taking effect the day after the
transfers to Belzec (April 1). The order severed access to
the gentile world for most working Jews, a step Lemkin
identified as a necessary precursor to genocide.
Damaging as these two documents are, the third was
devastating. It was a short memorandum from Heinrich
Himmler to Dr. Wilhelm Stuckart, the Reich minister of the
interior in Berlin. Dated August 25, it was sent as die
grosse Aktion was under way. “I recently was in Lemberg,”
Himmler wrote to Stuckart, “and had a very plain talk with
the governor, SS-Brigadeführer Dr. Wächter. I openly asked
him whether he wants to go to Vienna, because I would
have considered it a mistake, while there, not to have asked
this question that I am well aware of. Wächter does not
want to go to Vienna.”
A frank conversation, evoking the possibility of departure
and alternative career options, a way out, a return to
Vienna. Wächter declined; he chose to remain. To accept
would have killed his career. He did so in full knowledge of
die grosse Aktion, as was made clear by a letter Horst
showed me, sent by his father to his mother on August 16.
It noted that after Frau Wächter left, “a lot had to be done
in Lviv…recording the harvest, providing workers (now
already 250,000 from the district!), and the current grosse
Aktion against the Jews.”
Himmler ended his own letter of that period with an
additional thought: “It now remains to be seen how
Wächter will conduct himself in the General Government as
governor of Galicia, following our talk.”
Wächter must have conducted himself to Himmler’s full
satisfaction, because he got on with the job and remained
in Lemberg for two more years. As civilian leader, he had a
role in die grosse Aktion of August 1942.
Himmler’s letter offered no ambiguity or escape. When I
showed it to Horst, he stared at it, without expression. If
his father stood before him now, what would he say?
“I don’t really know,” Horst said. “It’s very difficult…
maybe I wouldn’t ask him anything at all.”
A silence hung around the desolate room. After a while,
Horst punctured it with an exonerating thought: his father
was overwhelmed by the situation, its inevitability and
catastrophic proportion, by the orders and their immediacy.
Nothing was inevitable, I suggested to Horst, not the
signature, not the oversight he exercised. Wächter could
have left.
This prompted another long silence, space for the sound
of snow and the crackle of burning logs. Faced with such a
document, could Horst not condemn the father? Was this a
father to love, or was it something else?
“I cannot say I love my father,” Horst said. “I love my
grandfather.” He looked toward the portrait of the old
military man that hangs above his bed.
“I have a responsibility for my father in some way, to see
what really happened, to tell the truth, and to do what I can
do for him.”
He reflected out loud. “I have to find some positive
aspect.”
He had somehow constructed a distinction between his
father and the system, between the individual and the
group of which he was a leader.
“I know that the whole system was criminal and that he
was part of it, but I don’t think he was a criminal. He didn’t
act like a criminal.”
Could his father have walked away from Lemberg and the
murderous operations his administration oversaw?
“There was no chance to leave the system,” Horst
whispered. The U.S. Justice Department documents said
otherwise. Yet Horst managed to find a way to sanitize the
material, able to describe it only as “unpleasant” or
“tragic.”
It was difficult to comprehend his reaction, yet I felt
sadness rather than anger. By failing to condemn, was he
not perpetuating the wrongs of the father?
“No.” Friendly, warm, talkative Horst offered nothing
more, unable to condemn. It was the fault of Frank’s
General Government, of the SS, of Himmler. Everyone else
in the group was responsible, but not Otto. Finally, he said,
“I agree with you that he was completely in the system.”
A crack.
“Indirectly, he was responsible for everything that
happened in Lemberg.”
Indirectly?
Horst was silent for a long moment. His eyes moist, I
wondered if he had wept.
105
FRANK WAS PROUD to be identified as a war criminal by The
New York Times. Early in 1943, he announced at an official
meeting, “I have the honor of being number one.” The
words were recorded in the daily diary, without
embarrassment. Even as the war turned against the
Germans, he still believed the Third Reich would last a
thousand years, with no need to show restraint in relation
to the treatment of the Poles and the Jews or the words he
had spoken of them. “They must go,” he had told his
cabinet. “I will therefore, on principle, approach Jewish
affairs in the expectation that the Jews will disappear.”
“To disappear.” The words generated applause,
encouraging him to go further, because he never did know
quite when to stop. They will be obliterated wherever they
are found, he went on, whenever the opportunity was
afforded. In this way, the unity and integrity of the Reich
would be upheld. How exactly would his government
proceed? “We cannot shoot these three and a half million
Jews; we cannot kill them with poison,” he explained. “But
we can proceed with the necessary steps that somehow or
other will lead to their successful extermination.” These
words too were recorded in his diary.
On August 2, Frank hosted a reception on the grounds of
the Wawel Castle. This was an opportunity for party
officials to reflect on developments. There had been
setbacks on the Russian front, but good progress
elsewhere. In March, the Kraków ghetto had been emptied,
in a single weekend, under the efficient leadership of SS-
Untersturmführer Amon Göth (later portrayed by the
British actor Ralph Fiennes in the film Schindler’s List).
This was because Frank no longer wished to see its ruins
from the Wawel. In May, an uprising in the Warsaw ghetto
had finally been crushed, the final act being the destruction
of the Great Synagogue. This was implemented by SSGruppenführer Jürgen Stoop, who described the details
with pride in a report prepared for Frank. A million fewer
people lived in Warsaw, causing Frank to hope the
population could be reduced “even further” if the ghetto
was “totally demolished.”
Yet the war was turning. In Italy, Mussolini had been
deposed, arrested on the orders of the Italian king, and
Polish intellectuals spoke increasingly openly of atrocities
at the nearby camps at Auschwitz and Majdanek. Frank
had hoped that the discovery of the bodies of thousands of
Polish officers in mass graves at Katyn, along with
members of the Polish intelligentsia murdered by the
Soviets in 1940, might improve relations between the
Germans and the Poles. It didn’t. Polish opinion compared
Katyn to “the mass death rate in the German concentration
camps,” he noted with dismay, or the “shooting of men,
women, and even of children and old people, during the
infliction of collective punishment.”
The party at the Wawel offered a refuge. On this bright
August day, his diary recorded new lines of combat in crisp
and clear words. “On the one hand, the swastika, and on
the other, the Jews.” He described the progress on his
territory: having “started out with 3,500,000 Jews,” his
territory now contained just “a few workers’ companies.”
What had happened to the rest? “All the others have, let us
say, emigrated.” Frank knew his role and his responsibility.
“We are all, as it were, accomplices,” he recorded with
careless abandon.
His relationship with Hitler and Himmler seemed to have
improved, because the führer offered him a new
appointment, without irony, as president of an international
center for legal studies. His position as governor secure, he
had work and friends, and a cease-fire had becalmed his
marriage. Lilly Grau wasn’t far away, and there was music,
a new piece composed in his honor by Richard Strauss
after he intervened to prevent the composer’s driver from
being conscripted to the east:
Who enters the room, so slender, so swank?
Behold our friend, our Minister Frank.
I found the words and searched for the score, without
success. “Disappeared,” I was told, no doubt for good
reasons of reputation.
Frank appreciated the music and art with which he
surrounded himself. As governor-general, he adopted a
selfless policy of taking into custody important Polish art
treasures, signing decrees that allowed famous works of art
to be confiscated for “protective” reasons. They became a
part of Germany’s artistic heritage. It was all rather
straightforward. Some pieces went to Germany, like the
thirty-one sketches by Albrecht Dürer, lifted from the
Lubomirski collection in Lemberg and personally handed to
Göring. Other pieces were held at the Wawel Castle, some
in Frank’s private rooms. He produced a finely bound
catalog, listing all the major works of art protectively
plundered in the first six months. The catalog revealed an
extraordinary range of exquisite and valuable items:
paintings by German, Italian, Dutch, French, and Spanish
masters; illustrated books; Indian and Persian miniatures
and woodcuts; the renowned fifteenth-century Veit Stoss
altarpiece installed at St. Mary’s Basilica in Kraków,
dismantled on Frank’s orders and sent to Germany; gold
and silver handicrafts, antique crystal, glass, and porcelain;
tapestries and antique weapons; rare coins and medals. All
plundered from the museums of Kraków and Warsaw, taken
from cathedrals, monasteries, universities, libraries,
private collections.
Frank kept some of the best for his own rooms. Not
everyone shared his taste. Niklas rarely entered his father’s
office suite but recalled a particularly “ugly painting,” a
woman with “a bandage around her head,” her hair
“smooth and perfectly combed” with a straight parting.
Frank used the painting as an example to his son. “This is
how you should comb your hair,” he told Niklas of the
woman who carried “a little white animal” in her arms, the
creature that resembled a rat. She petted with one hand,
looking not at the animal but into the void. “Adopt the same
parting,” Niklas was told. The picture, painted in the
fifteenth century by Leonardo da Vinci, was a portrait of
Cecilia Gallerani, The Lady with an Ermine. He last saw it
in the summer of 1944.
106
NIKLAS TOLD ME this story as Cecilia Gallerani visited
London, the centerpiece of a major Leonardo da Vinci
exhibit at the National Gallery. I visited her on a gray
December morning, the celebrated beauty, mistress to
Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, to whom she bore a son.
She sat for the portrait in about 1490, the ermine a symbol
of purity. In 1800, the painting joined the collection of
Princess Czartoryska, in Russian-controlled Poland,
hanging from 1876 at the Czartoryski Museum in Kraków.
There it remained for sixty-three years (with a brief
interlude in Dresden, during World War I), until Frank
purloined it. Mesmerized by the beauty and symbolism of
the painting, he kept her close by for five years.
Niklas recalls the painting with dread and a smile. As a
small boy, he feared the ratlike creature, objecting to his
father’s efforts to make him wear his hair like Cecilia. He
and his brother Norman remembered it in different rooms,
“one of those little spots in my memory,” like the shaving
foam in the bathroom.
Cecilia Gallerani, by Leonardo da
Vinci, 1944 photograph a gift to
Hans Frank
On my first visit to the Wawel, the curators were
preparing for the return of Cecilia Gallerani. After a tour of
Frank’s private apartments, the photography director took
me to her office to show me a large flat box, bound in faded
velvet. The title on the cover was “The Castle in Kraków,”
the lining a fine red crushed velvet. “It was forgotten when
the Nazis left; we found it in the basement.”
Inside, printed on a large card, was a happy message: “To
Herr Governor General Reich Minister Dr. Frank, on the
occasion of his birthday on 23 May 1944, offered by his
Court Office with gratitude.” The words were offered with
eight signatures, loyal servants who commissioned a series
of fine black-and-white photographs even as the Soviets
approached. They showed the splendor of the Wawel,
rooms and artifacts. Among them was a black-and-white
photograph of The Lady with an Ermine, framed in the
“red-white-black” imagery of the Nazi period.
107
I VISITED THE WAWEL in the company of Niklas, by which time
Cecilia Gallerani had returned. The museum director and
the owners of the painting allowed us to spend a little time
with her, on our own, early in the morning, before the
museum was open. Seventy years had passed since Niklas
last stood before her. He now did so once more, made small
before the power of the painting.
That evening, Niklas and I dined at a local restaurant in
Kraków’s old town. We talked of writing, of words and time,
of responsibility. Toward the end of the meal, three people
left an adjoining table. As they passed, an older lady among
them said, “We couldn’t help but overhear your
conversation; your book sounds interesting.” We talked;
they joined us, a mother with her daughter and son-in-law.
The mother was an academic, serene and distinguished, a
Brazilian professor of chemistry. She had returned to the
city of her birth, forced out in 1939 as a ten-year-old Jew.
To return wasn’t easy. How much of our conversation had
she actually overheard? I wondered. Not much, it emerged.
The daughter was born in Brazil well after the war. She
took a stronger line than her mother. She said, “I enjoy
being in Kraków, but I will never forget what the Germans
have done. I don’t ever want to talk to a German.”
Niklas and I glanced at each other.
The mother looked at Niklas and asked, “And you are a
Jew from Israel!?”
Niklas answered immediately: “Quite the opposite. I am a
German; I am the son of Hans Frank, the governor-general
of Poland.”
There was a fleeting moment of silence.
Then Niklas stood and rushed away, out of the restaurant.
Later that evening, I found him.
“They were right to have such strong views,” he said. “I
feel a shame for the wrong that the Germans have done to
them, to the mother, to their family.”
I comforted him.
108
NINETEEN FORTY-FOUR WAS a challenging year for Niklas’s
father. There were attempts on his life, including one as he
traveled by train from Kraków to Lemberg. In the summer,
the Allies liberated Paris; the Germans retreated from the
west and from the east, gathering inward.
The news from the east and the speed of the Red Army’s
advance were particularly worrisome. Yet Frank still found
time to turn his mind to the remaining Jews on his territory,
no more than a hundred thousand. They must be dealt with,
he told a Kraków meeting of Nazi Party members, “a race
which must be eradicated.”
Two days after the speech, delivered in early spring, the
Soviets entered the territory of the General Government,
rapidly approaching Kraków and the Wawel. In May, Frank
celebrated his forty-fourth birthday. Trusted colleagues
offered a gift, the fifty photographs in a velvet box,
including the photograph of The Lady with an Ermine.
On July 11, the head of the German police in Kraków was
the subject of an audacious assassination attempt by Polish
resistance. Frank retaliated with the execution of Polish
prisoners. On July 27, Lemberg fell, taken by the Soviets.
As Wächter fled toward Yugoslavia, Lauterpacht’s niece
Inka Gelbard could once again walk freely on the streets.
Żółkiew too was liberated, allowing Clara Kramer to leave
the cellar in which she had spent nearly two years. On
August 1, an uprising began in Warsaw. With no intention
of backing down, Frank ordered new measures, harsher
than ever before.
In September, Frank turned his mind to concentration
camps located in his territory. His diary recorded a
conversation with Josef Bühler about the Majdanek camp,
the first mention of any such place of death. After
liberating the camp two months earlier, the Soviets had
circulated a documentary film about the terrible situation
they discovered, focusing on the plight of the fifteen
hundred prisoners who remained.
109
AS THE SOVIETS ADVANCED toward Kraków, Frank decided to
take the painting of Cecilia Gallerani with him when he fled
the city. Early in 1945, as the Soviets closed in from the
east, near enough for gunfire to be heard, Frank ordered
the staff to prepare The Lady with an Ermine to travel with
him to Bavaria.
In those last weeks, Frank tidied up loose ends. He
completed two essays, one titled “On Justice,” the other
“The Orchestra Conductor.” He managed a final visit to the
Kraków opera house, a performance of Orpheus and
Eurydice. He watched films, including Seven Years of Bad
Luck with Hans Moser, the renowned Austrian actor who
had once played the lead in the film version of The City
Without Jews. Prospects were so bright back then, although
Frank was oblivious to the fact that Moser had refused to
divorce his Jewish wife, Blanca Hirschler.
January 17, 1945, was chosen as the day of departure.
The sky over Kraków was a deep blue, not a cloud in sight,
a city bathed in sunshine. Frank left the Wawel Castle at
1:25 p.m. in a black Mercedes (license plate EAST 23)
driven by his chauffeur, Herr Schamper, in a convoy that
carried his closest associates and at least thirty-eight
volumes of his daily diary back to Bavaria. The Lady with
an Ermine was with them, a form of preventive action,
Frank would later claim, so it “could not be plundered in
my absence.”
The convoy headed northwest for Oppeln, then on to
Schloss Seichau (Sichów), where Frank holed up for a few
days with Count von Richthofen, an old acquaintance.
Much of the art stolen from Kraków had already been
moved there. Brigitte and most of the children, including
Niklas, were back at the Schoberhof. Four days after
leaving the Wawel, Frank and the stenographers Mohr and
von Fenske, who faithfully wrote up his diary each day from
October 1939, destroyed most of the official documents
taken from Wawel. The diaries, however, were not harmed,
preserving the evidence of accomplishment.
The group headed southeast to Agnetendorf (now
Jagniątków) to visit another of Frank’s acquaintances, the
Nobel Prize—winning novelist Gerhart Hauptmann. After
taking tea with the Nazi-sympathizing writer, Frank
continued to Bad Aibling, a visit with Lilly Grau, the need
for affection. It was only a short trip from Bad Aibling to
the village of Neuhaus am Schliersee, the Frank family
home.
On February 2, Frank established a chancellery in exile
for the General Government, maintaining the illusion of
authority. He set up office at 12 Joseftalerstrasse, the
former Café Bergfrieden, where he would spend twelve
weeks issuing orders and pretending to exercise authority.
Occasionally, he visited Brigitte and the children at the
Schoberhof but also spent time with Lilly in Bad Aibling.
(She remained loyal to the end of her life, according to
Niklas; a photograph of Frank was found on her bedside
table, following her death many years later.) In April,
President Roosevelt died, succeeded by the vice president,
Harry Truman. Three weeks later, German radio announced
the death of the führer.
It was the end of the war and the Nazi Reich. On
Wednesday, May 2, Frank observed American tanks making
their way toward Neuhaus. Two days later, on Friday, May
4, he gave Brigitte a final gift, a bundle of bills amounting
to fifty thousand reichsmarks in cash. Niklas’s brother
Norman, present at the moment that Frank offered a
farewell to his wife, noted that it came without a final kiss
or any affectionate exchange of words. Frank became more
fearful than ever of Brigitte as his authority declined.
Niklas believed that Brigitte bore a share of the
responsibility, encouraging her husband, profiting from his
positions of power, refusing him a divorce in the summer of
1942. “If my mother had said, ‘Hans, stay out of it, I order
it,’ he would have stayed out of it.” This was offered as
explanation, not excuse.
Niklas has his own understanding of Brigitte’s powerful
hold over her husband, despite the cruelty of his behavior
toward her. “He was cruel, to hide the secret of his
homosexuality,” Niklas told me. How did he know? From
the letters of his father and the diary of his mother. “Every
time it seemed as if my Hans was desperately struggling,
again and again,” Brigitte confided, “to free himself from
his youthful involvement with men,” a reference to time
spent in Italy. This was the same Frank who welcomed the
adoption in 1935 of paragraph 175a of the Reich penal
code, extending the prohibition on homosexuality. Such
behavior was “expressive of a disposition opposed to the
normal national community,” Frank had declared, to be
punished without mercy “if the race is not to perish.” “I
think he was lustknabe, gay,” Niklas said.
After the farewells between Frank and Brigitte, the
former governor-general headed back to the faux
chancellery. He sat in the front room of the old café,
waiting with his adjutant, chauffeur, and secretary, all three
loyal to the end. They drank weak coffee.
A vehicle pulled up, a U.S. army jeep, outside the front
door. The engine was switched off. Lieutenant Walter Stein
of the U.S. Seventh Army hauled himself out, looked
around, made his way to the café, entered, scanned the
room, and asked which one was Hans Frank.
“I am,” said the Reich minister and former governorgeneral of occupied Poland.
“You’re coming with me, you’re under arrest.”
Stein sat Frank in the back of the jeep. The diaries were
placed on the front seat, then the jeep left. At some point,
Stein returned to Joseftalerstrasse to pick up some film,
which remained in the Stein family until it made its way
back to Niklas decades later. He allowed me to watch it,
footage of Frank being kind to a dog, of passing trains, of a
visit to the Kraków ghetto, of the girl in a red dress.
The Lady with an Ermine lingered at the Schoberhof, to
be collected a few weeks later, with a couple of
Rembrandts. Another painting, Portrait of a Young Man by
Raphael, disappeared, one of the most famous missing
paintings in the world. Niklas thought Brigitte might have
traded it for milk and eggs with a local farmer. “Perhaps it
hangs above a fireplace in Bavaria,” Niklas suggested, with
a twinkle.
110
IN JUNE, Frank’s name appeared on a list of possible
defendants for a criminal trial of leading German officials.
The inclusion of the “Butcher of Warsaw,” as he had come
to be known, was approved by Robert Jackson, with the
support of the Polish government in exile. Frank was moved
to a prison near Miesbach, where he was beaten up by the
U.S. Army soldiers who’d liberated Dachau. He attempted
suicide, first slitting his left wrist and then taking a rusty
nail to his throat. He failed and was taken to Mondorf-lesBains, a spa town in Luxembourg, housed at the
requisitioned Palace Hotel with other leading Nazis. There
he was interrogated.
One visitor to the hotel was the economist John Kenneth
Galbraith, on leave of absence from the U.S. War
Department. He wrote an article about the Palace Hotel,
published in Life magazine alongside an advertisement for
vitamin B capsules featuring an impossibly glamorous
Dorothy Lamour. Galbraith was unimpressed by Frank’s
group, which spent most of its time walking along the
veranda, looking out at the view. Galbraith observed the
traits of individual prisoners, noting the habit of Julius
Streicher, founder of Der Stürmer newspaper, who would
break his stroll and, without warning, turn to the railing,
where he would “stiffen to attention and throw out his arm
in a Nazi salute.” Robert Ley, head of Hitler’s German
Labor Front, looked like “a Bowery bum”; Hermann Göring
gave the impression of being a “not very intelligent
shyster.”
In such distinguished company, an unkempt, distraught
Frank filled the hours weeping or in prayer. In early
August, he was interviewed by a U.S. Army officer. His
words reflected a troubled state of mind, feeble efforts to
extricate himself from the accounting that was to come. In
this first period of captivity, Frank sought to sanitize the
role he’d played. The position in Kraków was “unbelievably
difficult,” he told the interrogator. “Special powers” were
granted to the SS; it was they who carried out “all those
dreadful atrocities.” They, not he, had acted against the
Polish resistance movement and the Jews. Yet inadvertently
he confirmed knowledge of the facts, claiming to have put
up “a constant fight” to avert “the worst.” Sometimes he
wept as he spoke.
Frank explained that he had never been politically active,
that his early role was confined to legal matters (as though
this might be a defense), that he fell out with Hitler in
1942, after the four big speeches delivered at universities
around Germany. He denied knowledge of concentration
camps in Poland, even in the area he controlled. He learned
of them only from the newspapers after the Soviets took
over. Auschwitz? It was outside his territory. The diaries
would exonerate him; that’s why he kept them. “If Jackson
gets my diaries I shall be able to stand there as a fighter for
law and justice in Poland.”
Who was responsible? The “German leaders.” The SS.
The Himmler and Bormann “clique.” Not the “German
people.” The Poles? “A brave people, a good people.” The
paintings he took to Germany? Preserved “for the Polish
people.”
Did he feel a sense of responsibility? Yes, he was
“conscience-stricken” because he hadn’t had the courage
to kill Hitler. The führer feared him, he told the
interrogator, because he was “a man possessed with the
passion of a Matthew.” This was the first of several
references I would come across in which Frank touched on
the central character in Johann Sebastian Bach’s work
about passion and solace, forgiveness and mercy. It
reminded me that Frank was a deeply cultured man, widely
read, greatly interested in classical music, and well
connected to leading writers and composers.
On August 12, 1945, he was transferred to prison cell 14
at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg, behind the
courtroom. At the end of the month, the prosecutors
announced a list of defendants, twenty-four “war criminals”
to be tried before the International Military Tribunal. Frank
was near the top of the list.
A few days later, he was subjected to more interrogation
in the presence of a twenty-year-old U.S. Army interpreter.
Today Siegfried Ramler lives in Hawaii, with no great
recollection of the questions that were asked, but with a
clear memory of the man. “Oh yes,” Siegfried told me,
“Frank’s eyes were strong and penetrating; there was
strong eye contact with me.” He thought Frank to be
“interesting and impressive,” articulate, cultured, a man
with a “clear mind,” one “overtaken by fanaticism” who
recognized “collective guilt but not his own.” The
responsibility of the group, not the individual? Yes. “The
deeds he did were committed with a clear mind,” Ramler
added. “He knew he had done wrong, that I saw.”
On October 18, shortly after Lemkin had finished his
work on the indictment and prepared to return to
Washington,
Frank
was
formally
charged.
His
circumstances had been transformed in the decade since
he had railed against the idea of an international criminal
court, in the summer of 1935. That court was now a reality
in which he was ensnared, and one of the eight men who
would judge him was none other than Professor Henri
Donnedieu de Vabres, the man with a walrus mustache
who’d addressed his Akademie für Deutsches Recht in 1935
and with whom he had dined.
The connection between the two men troubled the
Soviets, who were no more impressed by Frank’s newly
discovered religious devotion: at the end of October, in an
empty cell behind the Palace of Justice, Frank was baptized
into the Catholic Church. In this way, he would face up to
the crimes with which he was charged, including crimes
against humanity, war crimes, and genocide in occupied
Poland.
The coming together of the lives of Frank, Lauterpacht,
and Lemkin was formalized in Nuremberg’s Palace of
Justice, in the words of the indictment.
PART VII
The Child Who Stands Alone
111
IN OCTOBER 1945, as Le Monde reported Frank’s conversion
to Catholicism, Leon worked at the Lutetia Hotel on the
boulevard Raspail. Previously occupied by the Gestapo, the
hotel served as the home to a number of relief
organizations, including the Comité Juif d’Action Sociale et
de Reconstruction, with Leon working as a chef de service.
At the end of each day, he returned from his work with
displaced individuals to the small apartment on the fourth
floor of the rue Brongniart, to be with Rita and their
daughter.
There was no news from Vienna, Lemberg, or Żółkiew. As
more details emerged about what had transpired, he feared
the worst for his mother in Vienna, for his sisters, for the
family in Poland. In July his daughter celebrated her
seventh birthday—the first one to be spent in the company
of both her parents. My mother had no recollection of those
days, beyond a sense of upheaval and anxiety, not a time of
tranquillity. I shared with her all that I had learned: the
circumstances of Leon’s departure, Miss Tilney’s journey to
Vienna, Rita’s relationship with Emil Lindenfeld, her
departure from Vienna in October 1941, the closing of
Vienna’s doors.
Only now did she tell me about another document, one
that was tucked away, kept apart from the other papers. It
was new to me, a handwritten letter sent to Leon shortly
after he left Vienna for Paris. Dated February 6, 1939,
received in Paris, it offered another view on the life he left
behind in Vienna.
The twelve-page, elegantly handwritten document was
signed by a man named Leon Steiner. He styled himself a
Seelenarzt, a “doctor of the soul,” a shrink who signed off
the letter as a Psycho-graphologe (psycho-graphologist). I
was able to find no record or trace of this man, or anyone
of this name with any medical qualifications.
Letter from Leon Steiner to Leon Buchholz, February 6, 1939
The writing was in an old German script. In need of
assistance, I returned to Inge Trott, who sent me a
complete English translation, which was then reviewed by
another German-speaking friend. A first reading suggested
why the letter might have been kept apart.
Herr Steiner included a brief foreword:
The present manuscript has been written by a well-meaning friend
for the Buchholz family in view of the danger that threatened their
young love marriage. Because fortunately this marriage is now
looking forward to a full recovery, my manuscript is designed to be
in the form of a congratulation and as a memory.
Then to the substance. “Dear Herr Buchholz,” he began.
The author described the efforts he had undertaken to
restore the marriage and offered a firm riposte to Leon’s
critique that “the soul doctor Steiner has not done his job
well.” I could have done without your unjustified remarks,
Herr Steiner added. He referred to Rita’s “behavior,” in the
face of which Leon had “heaped punishing accusations
onto” his wife, with the consequence that Steiner was only
able to commence his psychological work after Leon’s
“successful departure” from Vienna, which was but a few
days earlier. Steiner had assumed—“because of a
misunderstanding”—that Leon was “full of anger and
antagonism,” that he left Vienna “with the firm intention of
leaving the only recently established home for good.” The
decision to leave was taken in the face of “disharmony” and
“lamentable conflicts” in the young marriage. These were a
result of Rita’s “trying excesses” (no explanation is offered)
and of her “shortcomings” (no details are given).
The letter thus made clear that Leon’s departure
occurred at a time of great conflict with Rita, and perhaps
because of it. The nature of the conflict was not set out.
With this background, Herr Steiner described his efforts to
apply to the situation “every psychoanalytical method” at
his disposal, reflecting a desire to leave “nothing undone.”
He explained that he too, like Leon, heaped accusations
onto Rita (“she honestly deserved them!”) and that
eventually his labors were “crowned with success.” Despite
Leon’s slurs, Rita had finally “acknowledged her
shortcomings,” which opened the door to “a full recovery.”
To reach even that point was not without its considerable
difficulties, Steiner added, given the “prevailing bad
situation” in the family. He continued, “External and
potentially damaging influences—admitted by both parties
—created lamentable conflicts,” a situation of “disharmony”
that threatened to become “antagonistic.”
Steiner reported that success was premised on what he
was able to uncover, that which was concealed, namely
Leon’s “deep love” for his wife and also “for the delightful
child who stands alone.” This seemed to be a reference to
my mother, who was then just a few months old. Leon
would begin to miss the two beings, Steiner predicted,
individuals he loved “so utterly.” Rita “will be longing for
your company,” he foresaw, having sensed the “reawakened
feelings of love” reflected in a single sentence of a recent
letter from Leon. Armed with this expression of affection,
Steiner attempted to prepare Rita—“likewise filled with
reawakened love”—for a happily married future. He signed
off optimistically, expressing the hope that Leon’s “firm
belief in God” would help both overcome the obstacles that
would surely confront them in “the new world.” Of life in
Vienna beyond the family, of the German takeover, of the
new laws, Herr Steiner had nothing to say.
112
SOMETHING HAD HAPPENED, there were “lamentable conflicts”
so Leon left. What that might have been was unclear from
this peculiar, tortuous, defensive letter. Steiner’s fawning
words were coded, laden with ambiguity, open to
interpretation. Inge Trott asked whether I wanted to know
what she thought the letter meant. Yes, I would. She
offered the thought that the letter might be taken to
indicate that a question had been raised as to the paternity
of the child, the “child who stands alone.” It was a curious
expression, Inge said. The choice of words caused a
thought to enter her mind, because she was conscious that
in those days information of such a nature—that the child
may have a different father—was not a matter that could
have been communicated explicitly.
I reviewed the letter with our German neighbor, who
tidied up the translation. She agreed with Inge that the
reference to the “child who stands alone” is “tricky,”
certainly ambiguous. She didn’t accept, however, that it
necessarily referred to an issue of paternity. A German
teacher at my son’s school offered to read the letter. He
tended toward the view of my neighbor, rather than that of
Inge, but was not willing to offer an interpretation of his
own.
Another neighbor, a writer of novels who had recently
been awarded the Goethe Prize for his facility with
German, indicated another view. “Rum indeed,” he wrote in
a handwritten letter posted through our front door. The
term Seelenarzt might be “pejorative,” or perhaps “self-
ironic.” From the style of the letter, he concluded that Herr
Steiner was most likely “a semi-intellectual” or just a
“dismal and tortuous writer.” What the writer might have
actually been saying—with a sort of vindictive triumphalism
—was unclear. “I have a feeling he is shoving it to Herr
Buchholz in a big way, but with Herr B. not with us, what is
he shoving?” This neighbor suggested the letter be shown
to a specialist in German linguistics. I found two, and
unable to decide which to opt for, I sent the letter to both.
—
Linguist No. 1 said that the letter was “strange,” with its
grammatical errors, incomplete sentences, numerous
mistakes of punctuation. Herr Steiner seemed to have a
“language deficit,” he said, and went a step further,
offering a specific prognosis. “It reads like the text of
someone with a milder form of Wernicke’s aphasia,” a
language disorder caused by damage to the left side of the
brain. Or it might be that Herr Steiner had simply been
compelled to write under enormous pressures—the times
were difficult in Vienna, after all—so that great chunks of
thought were churned out and “hastily thrown onto paper.”
“I do not see any implications about the child’s origin,” this
linguist concluded, beyond the presence of “family trouble
during which the child’s father left the family.”
Linguist No. 2 was a little more generous to Herr Steiner.
At first, he thought that the references to the wife and child
might refer to a single person, one “with two personas.”
Then he showed the letter to his wife, who disagreed (she
tends to have more experience in the comprehension of
subtle meanings, he explained). The wife shared the
instinct of Inge Trott, that the reference to “the child who
stands alone” was intentionally subtle, that it might mean
that the father was a person “unknown,” or that Herr
Steiner simply didn’t “want to declare himself.”
The views were inconclusive. They offered hints, but no
more, that Leon left Vienna in circumstances of
considerable tension and conflict. These might (or might
not) have been occasioned by questions as to the child’s
paternity.
That Leon might not be my biological grandfather was
not a thought that had ever occurred to me. It seemed a
most unlikely possibility. At one level, it wasn’t disturbing;
because he acted and felt like my grandfather, he was my
grandfather, irrespective of any biological consideration.
Yet the implications for others, for my mother in particular,
were more difficult to countenance. This was unexpectedly
delicate.
113
I PONDERED THE MATTER for several weeks, wondering what to
do next. That process was interrupted by an e-mail from
Sandra Seiler on Long Island. She too had been thinking
about her grandfather Emil Lindenfeld, thinking about the
Viennese photographs of Rita and Emil Lindenfeld, taken in
a garden in 1941. She’d spoken with a friend; a thought
had emerged.
“The idea that something might have been going on
between them made perfect sense,” she wrote. Like Rita,
Emil Lindenfeld chose to remain in Vienna, after his wife
and a daughter left, in 1939. The two of them were alone in
Vienna, without spouse or child. Three years passed, then
Rita left. After the war, Emil was alone; he went in search
of Rita.
“I dwelled on that thought all day,” Sandra wrote.
—
Sitting in Sandra’s living room a few months earlier,
peeling photographs off the pages of Emil’s album, we had
touched on the possibility of a DNA test, “to be sure.” It
seemed a disloyal idea, so we pushed it away. Yet it
lingered.
Sandra and I continued to exchange e-mails, and the
subject of a DNA test returned. I’d explored the possibility,
I told her. It turned out to be complicated: learning whether
two people shared a grandparent was not an altogether
straightforward exercise; it was much easier if you were
trying to establish whether the two shared a grandmother.
A shared grandfather was a more complex matter, in the
technical sense.
I was referred to an academic at the Department of
Genetics at the University of Leicester, a specialist in the
exhumation of mass graves. She introduced me to a
company that specialized in these matters. A test was
available to assess the likelihood that two individuals of
different gender—Sandra and I—might share the same
grandfather. It worked by comparing matches among
segments of DNA (in units known as centimorgans). The
test took the number of matching segments and then the
sizes, as well as the overall total size of the matching
segments (or blocks) between two or more individuals.
From these centimorgans and blocks, it was possible to
estimate whether two individuals are related. The test was
not definitive, only an estimate, merely the assessment of a
probability. It required nothing more than a swab of saliva.
After some reflection, Sandra Seiler and I agreed to
proceed. The materials arrived from the company. Having
paid a fee, you received a kit, scraped the inside of your
cheek with a cotton swab, placed the scraper in a sealed
plastic container, posted the packet off to America, then
waited. Sandra was braver than I. “I scraped rather
vigorously last night and put it into today’s outgoing mail,”
she wrote cheerily.
I waited two months before scraping, not sure whether I
really wanted to know. Eventually, I scraped, posted,
waited.
A month passed.
114
AN E-MAIL ARRIVED from Sandra. The results of the DNA test
were available on the Web site. I took a look at the site, but
the information was so complicated that I was unable to
work out what it meant, so I e-mailed the company for
assistance. My contact there, Max, responded promptly,
taking me through the results.
Max explained that I had “about 77% Jewish ancestry and
23% European ancestry.” This was subject to a large
margin of error (25 percent), due to the historic mixing
between Ashkenazi Jews and Europeans. Some might find
this material to be “interesting,” he added, in the sense
that such results tended, as he put it, to “endorse the idea
that Jews, in addition to being bound by their religion, are a
people-nation bound by, among other things (culture,
language, etc….) a common genetic background.” I offered
no comment to Max on the observation, which struck me as
raising all sorts of issues, on identity, on the individual and
the group.
Max got to the point. I may be “very distantly” related to
Sandra, he said, but was actually more closely related to
Max. In both cases, the connection was likely to be no more
than a single common ancestor, a single individual who
would have been shared “many generations ago.” There
was “zero possibility” that Sandra and I shared a
grandfather.
This was a relief. I suppose I never really doubted the
conclusion. That’s what I told myself.
Leon left Vienna alone. Perhaps he did so because of
doubts about paternity, or because he and Rita weren’t
getting on, or because he was banished, or because he was
sick of the Nazis, or feared them, or because he was able to
leave, or because of Herr Lindenfeld, or for myriad other
possible reasons. That he was the father of “the child who
stands alone” was not in doubt.
There were, however, other uncertainties. Leon left on
his own. A few months later, Elsie Tilney traveled to Vienna
to collect the child. Rita allowed this, then she was alone.
They married in 1937, a child arrived a year later, then
there was “disharmony” in the marriage, “lamentable
conflicts” in the relationship. They reached out to the “soul
doctor.” Something else was going on, and I still didn’t
know what it was.
PART VIII
Nuremberg
Credit p8.1
115
THE FIRST TIME I visited courtroom 600 in Nuremberg’s
Palace of Justice, I was struck by its intimacy, and a warmth
created by the wood paneling. It was strangely familiar, not
the brutal space I’d expected and not nearly as large. I
noticed a wooden door directly behind the seats where the
defendants had sat, but didn’t make much of it on that first
visit.
Now I was back, accompanied by Niklas Frank, and keen
to pass through the door. As Niklas wandered around the
room, I stood below the windows, behind the place once
occupied by the long judges’ table. The flags of the four
victorious Allies were long gone as I made my way around
the outer edge of the room, along the wall with the large
white screen, behind the witness box, around to the wall on
the left, to the place behind the seats where the defendants
sat on two rows of wooden benches.
Niklas slid the door open, walked in, shut the door. A
little time passed, then the door opened, he came out and
ambled over to the place his father had sat for nearly a
year. In this room, prosecutors had given their all to obtain
convictions as the defendants sought to justify their actions
and save themselves from the rope. Lawyers argued
obscure points, witnesses offered testimony, judges
listened. Questions were posed and sometimes answered.
Evidence was examined and pored over, documents,
photographs, moving images, skin. There was commotion,
tears, drama, and much tedium. In this way, it was an
ordinary courtroom experience, yet in reality there had
never been one quite like it; this was the first time in
human history that the leaders of a state were put on trial
before an international court for crimes against humanity
and genocide, two new crimes.
116
EARLY ON THE MORNING of the first day of the trial, November
20, 1945, Hans Frank awoke in a small cell with an open
toilet in the prison behind the courtroom. At about nine
o’clock, he was escorted by a white-helmeted guard along a
series of corridors to the small lift that took him up to the
courtroom. He entered through the sliding wooden door
and was then led to the front bench of the dock. Five along
from Hermann Göring, he was seated next to Alfred
Rosenberg, Hitler’s principal racial theorist. The
prosecutors were seated to Frank’s right, around four long
wooden tables, divided by nationality. In military garb, the
Russians were closest to the defendants, then the French,
then the British. The Americans were farthest away. Behind
the prosecutors sat members of the press corps, chatting
noisily. Above them, a lucky few were allowed to sit in the
public gallery. Directly opposite Frank was the judges’
bench, still empty, behind a row of female stenographers.
Frank wore a gray suit and the dark glasses that would
distinguish him through the trial. He kept his gloved left
hand out of sight, evidence of the failed suicide attempt. He
was composed and showed no obvious emotion. Fourteen
more defendants followed Frank into the courtroom, seated
to his left and on a second bench. Arthur Seyss-Inquart,
former gauleiter of Vienna, sat immediately behind him.
Three defendants were absent: Robert Ley had killed
himself, Ernst Kaltenbrunner felt unwell, and Martin
Bormann was yet to be apprehended.
Lauterpacht was in the courtroom that morning,
observing the defendants, but Lemkin was back in
Washington. Neither man knew what had happened to his
family, unaccounted for somewhere in Poland. Nor did they
have any information as to the role Frank might have
played in their fate.
At exactly ten o’clock, a clerk entered the courtroom
through another door, this one near the judges’ table. “The
Tribunal will now enter,” he said, the words translated into
German, Russian, and French, through six overhead
microphones and ungainly headphones, another novelty. A
heavy wooden door opened across from Frank, on the left.
Eight elderly men trundled in, six in black gowns, the two
Soviets in military uniform, making their way to the judges’
table. Frank knew one of them, although ten years had
passed since they were last together in Berlin: Henri
Donnedieu de Vabres, the French judge.
The man in charge of the courtroom, Sir Geoffrey
Lawrence, an English court of appeal judge, sat at the
center of the judges’ bench. Bald and Dickensian, he’d
been appointed just a few weeks earlier by Clement Attlee,
the British prime minister. He was chosen to preside over
the case by the other seven judges because they couldn’t
agree on anyone else. He and his wife, Marjorie, occupied a
house on Stielerstrasse, at No. 15, on the outskirts of the
city, a grand house that once belonged to a Jewish toy
manufacturer, later used as an SS mess.
Each of the four Allied powers nominated two judges, and
the defendants did what they could to glean a little
information on each. On the far left—from the defendants’
vantage point—sat Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Volchkov,
a former Soviet diplomat, alongside Major General Iona
Nikitchenko, a dour-faced, hard-line military lawyer who
once served as a judge in Stalin’s show trials. Then came
the two British judges, possibly offering some hope to
Frank. Norman Birkett—who had shared a lecture platform
with Lemkin at Duke University in the spring of 1942—had
been a Methodist preacher, then a parliamentarian and
next a judge. To his right, Sir Geoffrey Lawrence, a career
barrister, then the senior American, Francis Biddle, who
succeeded Robert Jackson as Roosevelt’s attorney general
and once worked with Lauterpacht. Then John Parker, a
judge from Richmond, Virginia, still embittered by his
failed effort to get to the U.S. Supreme Court. The French
were seated on the far right: Henri Donnedieu de Vabres,
professor of criminal law at the Sorbonne, and Robert
Falco, a judge of the Paris Court of Appeal, removed from
judicial office in late 1940 for being a Jew. Behind the
judges hung the four Allied flags, a reminder of the victors.
There was no German flag.
Lord Justice Lawrence opened the proceedings. The trial
was “unique in the history of the jurisprudence of the
world,” he began, offering a brief introduction before the
indictment was read out. Frank and the other defendants,
well-behaved men, listened politely. Each of the charges
was addressed by a prosecutor from the four Allied powers.
The Americans opened with the first count, the conspiracy
to commit international crimes. The baton was passed to
the British and the round figure of Sir David Maxwell Fyfe,
who addressed the second count, crimes against peace.
The third count was allocated to the French: war crimes,
including the charge of “genocide.” Frank must have
wondered about this word and how it made its way into the
proceedings, as prosecutor Pierre Mounier became the first
person to use it in a court of law. The fourth and final
count, “crimes against humanity,” was addressed by a
Soviet prosecutor, another new term for Frank to ponder,
addressed for the first time in open court.
The charges having been set out, the prosecutors
proceeded to address the litany of terrible facts, the killings
and other acts of horror of which the defendants were
accused. Dealing with the atrocities against Jews and Poles,
the Soviet team soon homed in on the atrocities in Lvov,
touching on the Aktionen of August 1942, matters of
personal knowledge for Frank, but only of imagination for
Lauterpacht. The Soviet prosecutor was strikingly precise
with the dates and numbers. Between September 7, 1941,
and July 6, 1943, he told the judges, the Germans killed
more than eight thousand children in the Janowska camp,
in the heart of Lemberg. Reading the transcript, I
wondered whether Frank would have recalled the speech
he gave in the auditorium of the university on August 1 or
the game of chess he played and lost with Frau Wächter. On
the newsreel, Frank showed no discernible reaction.
The first day ran long. Having set out the general facts,
prosecutors then turned to the actions of the individual
defendants. First Hermann Göring, then Joachim von
Ribbentrop, Rudolf Hess, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Alfred
Rosenberg. Then Hans Frank, his role being summarized
by the American prosecutor Sidney Alderman, the man who
supported Lemkin on genocide. He needed but a few
sentences to encapsulate Frank’s role. The former
governor-general would have known what to expect
because the details had been shared with his lawyer, Dr.
Alfred Seidl. Alderman described Frank’s role in the years
leading up to 1939, then his appointment by the führer as
governor-general. He had a personal influence with Hitler,
it was said, and he “authorized, directed, and participated”
in war crimes and crimes against humanity. The events in
Poland and Lemberg were placed at the heart of the trial.
117
LAUTERPACHT WROTE to Rachel, who was visiting her parents
in Palestine, to offer an account of a day “packed with
emotion,” one he never forgot but of which he rarely spoke.
“It was an unforgettable experience to see, for the first
time in history, a sovereign State in the dock.”
As Lauterpacht listened to the Soviets addressing the
killings in Lemberg, he was entirely in the dark about the
whereabouts of his family. The press noted his presence, an
important part of the team led by the dashing Sir Hartley
Shawcross. The young group of British barristers was
“strongly reinforced by Professor Lauterpacht, of
Cambridge University,” The Times reported, describing him
as “an eminent authority on international law.” He’d
traveled from Cambridge to Nuremberg a day earlier and
was lodged at the Grand Hotel, an establishment with a
fine bar that is unchanged today. He was issued pass No.
146, which allowed him general access around the building
(“This pass admits owner into security area and
courtroom”).
With the Soviets addressing crimes against humanity, the
protection of individuals was brought to center stage.
Lauterpacht would have heard the references to
“genocide,” an impractical concept of which he did not
approve, a term he feared would undermine the protection
of individuals. He worried that emphasis on genocide would
reinforce latent instincts of tribalism, perhaps enhancing
the sense of “us” and “them,” pitting one group against
another.
The proximity of the defendants, including Frank, left a
deep impression. “My table was at a distance of about 15
yards from the accused,” he explained to Rachel, allowing
close observation. It was a “great satisfaction” to watch the
faces of the defendants as the list of their crimes was read
out in public. Yet he said nothing to Rachel about the
terrible facts described on the opening day, of events in
Lemberg in the summer of 1942. Did he look at Frank with
particular attention? Did Frank notice Lauterpacht? I asked
Eli if he knew where his father sat, in the public gallery or
with the British prosecutors or elsewhere. Eli told me he
had no information. “My father never spoke of the matter
to me,” he explained, “and there is no photograph of my
father in the courtroom.” All that remained was a single
photograph published in The Illustrated London News,
showing the British prosecution team outside the
courtroom.
Credit 117.1
British prosecution team, Nuremberg, The Illustrated London News,
December 1945; front row, left to right, Lauterpacht, Maxwell Fyfe,
Shawcross, Khaki Roberts, and Patrick Dean.
A team of twelve unsmiling men in suits. Shawcross sits
at the center, legs crossed, hands on knees. To his right,
looking at the photographer, sits a somber David Maxwell
Fyfe, and next to him, at the beginning of the front row,
Lauterpacht looks into the camera with arms folded. He
seems confident, satisfied even.
I wondered where Lauterpacht had sat in courtroom 600.
On a warm September afternoon, I took myself to the
archive of Getty Images, tucked into a west London suburb.
There I found many photographs from the trial, including
an invaluable collection commissioned by the Picture Post,
a defunct newspaper that had several photographers
present in the courtroom. There were contact sheets—“shot
by a German photographer,” the archivist said with an
ironic smile—and many negatives, each imprinted on a
fragile rectangle of thin glass, requiring the use of a special
viewer. This was a time-consuming exercise, because each
glass plate had to be removed from a protective translucent
paper envelope, then placed onto the viewer, which had to
be brought into focus. Over the course of an afternoon,
hundreds of small envelopes and their glass plates passed
through my hands, a laborious search for Lauterpacht.
Many hours passed, and then I spotted him, walking into
court on the opening day of the trial, looking apprehensive,
wearing a dark suit and white shirt, his familiar round
spectacle frames perched across the bridge of his nose. He
walked in behind Hartley Shawcross, who stared into the
camera with an air of mild disdain. Both men were about to
see the defendants.
I worked my way through each of the many small glass
plates, scanning the tiny faces, hoping to find another of
Lauterpacht. There were so many people in court that day
the exercise was like a search for a familiar face in a
painting by Bruegel. Eventually, I spotted him, just a short
distance from Frank.
Credit 117.2
Nuremberg, November 20, 1945; Shawcross enters the courtroom,
looking into the camera, followed by Lauterpacht
The photograph was taken on the opening day, from the
loft above the courtroom, looking down. The defendants
were in the bottom right-hand corner, the dominant figure
of Hermann Göring visible as he leaned forward in an
oversized, light-colored suit. Along the bench, five
defendants to Göring’s left, just before the image was
interrupted by the sill of the opening that allowed the
image to be taken, I could see the semi-bowed head of
Frank. He was seated next to Alfred Rosenberg, who
seemed to be looking at something in Frank’s lap.
In the middle of the photograph, I counted five long
wooden tables, each with nine or ten seats around it. The
British prosecution team was seated at the second table
from the left. There was David Maxwell Fyfe, seated to the
left of the Soviet prosecutor at the lectern addressing the
judges, who were out of image to the left. Lauterpacht was
visible at the end of the same table, hands clenched under
his chin, intent, reflective. Looking toward the defendants,
he was separated from Frank by only a few tables and
chairs.
Frank must have had many concerns that day. Brigitte
had written, he told Alfred Rosenberg and Baldur von
Schirach, the former gauleiter of Vienna who oversaw the
deportation of Malke Buchholz and sixty-five thousand
other Viennese Jews to Theresienstadt. She told her
husband that Niklas and the other children had been sent
out on the streets to beg for bread.
Credit 117.3
Palace of Justice, Nuremberg, November 20, 1945
“Tell me, Rosenberg, was all this destruction and misery
necessary?” Frank asked. “What was the sense in all that
racial politics?”
Baldur von Schirach heard Rosenberg explain that he
hadn’t expected his brand of racial politics to lead to mass
murder and war. “I was only looking for a peaceful
solution.”
118
FRANK PLEADED ON the second day, in the presence of
Lauterpacht. Like the other defendants, he was given two
options, “guilty” or “not guilty.” The five who spoke before
him opted for “not guilty.”
“Hans Frank,” Lord Justice Lawrence said in a rounded,
gravelly voice, directing the German jurist to take the
stand. Martha Gellhorn, the American war correspondent
who was in court that day, was struck by Frank’s “small
cheap face,” the pink cheeks framing a “little sharp nose,”
and the “black sleek hair.” A patient air, she thought, like a
waiter in an empty restaurant, quietly composed as
compared with twitching, mad Rudolf Hess.
Frank’s dark glasses kept the world away from his eyes,
which might have revealed something akin to emotion.
He’d had much time to weigh the pros and cons between
the two options, to think through the opportunities offered
to the prosecution by the thirty-eight incriminating volumes
of diaries. If he thought about expressing some degree of
responsibility, perhaps just the little needed to distinguish
him from the other defendants, he wasn’t going to show it.
“I declare myself not guilty.” He spoke with purpose, then
sat down on the unforgiving bench. I found a picture, his
gloved left hand on the railing of the dock and his jacket
tightly buttoned as he stood upright and proud, looking
firmly ahead at the judges, observed by a curious defense
lawyer.
None of the defendants chose the “guilty” option.
Although they were generally well behaved, the only
incident was prompted by Göring, who suddenly stood up
to address the tribunal, only for Lord Justice Lawrence to
intervene immediately and firmly. Sit down, say nothing.
Göring offered no resistance, a moment to illuminate the
silent shift of power. Instead, Robert Jackson was invited to
open the case for the prosecution.
Over the next hour, Jackson spoke words that made him
famous around the world. Lauterpacht sat close behind a
colleague he admired, watching him walk the few steps to
the wooden lectern on which Jackson neatly arranged his
papers and a pen. From a different angle, behind the ranks
of the German defense counsel staring intently at the
American, Frank could study the features of the
prosecution’s principal architect.
Credit 118.1
“I declare myself not guilty.” Hans Frank, November 21, 1945.
“The privilege of opening the first trial in history for
crimes against the peace of the world imposes a grave
responsibility.” Jackson crafted each word with care,
signaling its significance. He spoke of the victor’s
generosity and the responsibility of the vanquished, of the
calculated, malignant, devastating wrongs that were to be
condemned and punished. Civilization would not tolerate
their being ignored, and they must not be repeated. “That
four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with
injury, stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit
their captive enemies to the judgment of the law is one of
the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to
reason.”
Speaking with calm deliberation, Jackson captured the
unique intensity of that long moment in the courtroom,
reinforced it, and offered a practical way forward. Yes, the
tribunal was “novel and experimental,” he recognized,
created “to utilize international law to meet the greatest
menace.” Yet it was intended to be practical, not to
vindicate obscure legal theories, and it was certainly not
concerned with “the punishment of petty crimes by little
people.” The defendants were men who had possessed
great power, using it “to set in motion evils which leave no
home in the world untouched.”
Jackson spoke of the defendants’ “Teutonic passion for
thoroughness,” their propensity to record their actions in
writing. He described the treatment of national groups and
Jews, the “mass killings of countless human beings in cold
blood,” the commission of “crimes against humanity.”
These were ideas discussed with Lauterpacht in New York
in 1941 and then again four years later in the garden at
Cranmer Road. They were the themes he’d raised in
Indianapolis in September 1941, when Lemkin heard him
call for a “reign of law” against international lawlessness.
Jackson alighted on the person of Hans Frank, who
seemed to perk up at the mention of his name. “A lawyer by
profession, I say with shame,” and one who helped to craft
the Nuremberg decrees. Jackson introduced Frank’s
diaries, drawing easily from the daily record of private
musings and public speeches, an early indication of the
central role that the diaries would play in the proceedings.
“I cannot eliminate all lice and Jews in only a year,” Frank
said in 1940. A year later, he spoke with pride of the million
and more Poles he’d sent to the Reich. And as late as 1944,
even as the Soviets approached Kraków, Frank was on the
case, proclaiming the Jews to be “a race which has to be
eliminated.” The diaries were a gold mine to be seamed. If
Frank had a sense of foreboding as to the use to which his
words would be put, he didn’t show it.
Such rich evidence allowed Jackson to end his
submissions with a simple plea. The trial was an “effort to
apply the discipline of the law to statesmen,” and its
usefulness would be measured by its ability to end
lawlessness, just as the new United Nations organization
offered the prospect of a step toward peace and the rule of
law. Yet the “real complaining party,” Jackson told the
judges, was not the Allies but “civilization” itself. Because
the defendants had brought the German people to so low a
“pitch of wretchedness,” stirring hatreds and violence on
every continent, their only hope was that international law
would lag far behind morality. The judges must make clear
that “the forces of international law” were “on the side of
peace, so that men and women of good will, in all countries,
may have ‘leave to live by no man’s leave, underneath the
Law.’ ” Lauterpacht recognized the words, taken from
Rudyard Kipling’s poem “The Old Issue,” evoking events in
England in 1689, the struggle to subject an all-powerful
English sovereign to the constraints of the law.
As Jackson spoke, Lauterpacht showed no hint of
emotion. He was pragmatic, stoical, patient. Jackson’s
performance was magnificent and historic, he would tell
Rachel, a “great personal triumph.” He found satisfaction
too in watching the faces of Frank and the other accused,
forced to hear the stories of their atrocities. As soon as
Jackson finished, Lauterpacht went up to him and shook his
hand, contact that lasted “a long minute.” He would have
noted at least one notable omission in Jackson’s words:
despite the support offered to Lemkin back in May, and
then again in October, when the indictment was finalized,
Jackson did not use the word “genocide.”
119
LAUTERPACHT LEFT Nuremberg on the third day of the trial to
return to Cambridge and the classroom. He traveled with
Shawcross, who was needed in London on government
business, which pushed back the British opening speech to
December 4. Shawcross didn’t want his deputy, Maxwell
Fyfe, to be the first British speaker.
Lauterpacht’s journey home was slow because of bad
weather. By the time the small plane landed at Croydon
Airport, he felt ill. Always a poor sleeper, he experienced
nights that were ever more difficult, haunted by details
heard in the courtroom. The words set out in Frank’s
diaries, fears and uncertainties about the family in Lwów,
the sense of failure and of responsibility that he’d failed to
persuade them to move to England. Such personal
concerns were compounded by professional doubts, about
the poor quality of Shawcross’s opening speech, which was
badly structured and weak on the law.
With Jackson’s strong opening, the British would have to
up their game, he told Rachel first and then Shawcross
himself, which was not an easy task because the attorney
general had written large parts of the draft speech.
Shawcross asked him to improve the draft, not an invitation
to be declined. Ignoring his doctor’s instruction to rest,
Lauterpacht dedicated a full week to the task, an
opportunity to promote his own ideas about the protection
of individuals and crimes against humanity. He wrote the
draft in his own hand, then passed the pages over to Mrs.
Lyons, his loyal secretary, who prepared a typescript for his
review. The final typed manuscript ran to thirty pages, sent
by train from Cambridge to Liverpool Street station in
London for collection by Shawcross’s office.
Eli had his father’s original handwritten draft. I was able
to read Lauterpacht’s treatment of the main subject
allocated to him by Shawcross; Germany’s recourse to war,
which Lauterpacht put in better order. He then introduced
arguments on the subject for which he felt a greater
passion; the rights of the individual. The text he crafted
drew rather obviously from ideas he’d set out in An
International Bill of the Rights of Man, published just a few
months earlier. The gist of his thinking was captured in a
single sentence: “The community of nations has in the past
claimed and successfully asserted the right to intercede on
behalf of the violated rights of man trampled upon by the
State in a manner calculated to shock the moral sense of
mankind.”
These words invited the tribunal to rule that the Allies
were entitled to use military force to protect the “rights of
man.” The argument was contentious then, and it remains
so today, sometimes referred to as “humanitarian
intervention.” Indeed, on the very day I first saw
Lauterpacht’s original handwritten draft, President Obama
and the British prime minister, David Cameron, were trying
to persuade the U.S. Congress and the British Parliament
that military intervention in Syria was justified in law, to
protect the human rights of hundreds of thousands of
individuals. The arguments they made—without success—
drew on ideas expressed by Lauterpacht, reflected in the
concept of crimes against humanity, acts so egregious that
others were entitled to act in a protective capacity.
Lauterpacht argued that he was doing no more than
developing existing, well-established rules. The argument—
an ambitious one in 1945—he now made as an advocate,
not as a scholar.
Lauterpacht’s draft made no reference to genocide, or to
the Nazis, or Germans as a group, or crimes against Jews
or Poles, or indeed crimes against any other groups.
Lauterpacht set his back against group identity in the law,
whether as victim or perpetrator. Why this approach? He
never fully explained it, but it struck me as being
connected to what he experienced in Lemberg, on the
barricades, observing for himself how one group turned
against another. Later he saw firsthand how the law’s
desire to protect some groups—as reflected in the Polish
Minorities Treaty—could create a sharp backlash. Poorly
crafted laws could have unintended consequences,
provoking the very wrongs they sought to prevent. I was
instinctively sympathetic to Lauterpacht’s view, which was
motivated by a desire to reinforce the protection of each
individual, irrespective of which group he or she happened
to belong to, to limit the potent force of tribalism, not
reinforce it. By focusing on the individual, not the group,
Lauterpacht wanted to diminish the force of intergroup
conflict. It was a rational, enlightened view, and also an
idealistic one.
The counterargument was put most strongly by Lemkin.
Not opposed to individual rights, he nevertheless believed
that an excessive focus on individuals was naive, that it
ignored the reality of conflict and violence: individuals
were targeted because they were members of a particular
group, not because of their individual qualities. For
Lemkin, the law must reflect true motive and real intent,
the forces that explained why certain individuals—from
certain targeted groups—were killed. For Lemkin, the focus
on groups was the practical approach.
Despite their common origins, and the shared desire for
an effective approach, Lauterpacht and Lemkin were
sharply divided as to the solutions they proposed to a big
question: How could the law help to prevent mass killing?
Protect the individual, says Lauterpacht. Protect the group,
says Lemkin.
120
LAUTERPACHT COMPLETED the draft speech for Shawcross and
sent it off to London on November 29, silent as to genocide
and groups. He allowed himself a modest celebration, a
walk in the dark to the Fellows Parlour at Trinity College
and a single glass of port. The following day, Shawcross
sent a courteous note of thanks.
Shawcross returned to Nuremberg without Lauterpacht
to deliver the British opening speech. On December 4, the
attorney general addressed the tribunal shortly after the
screening of a first, grim film about concentration camps,
which left many in a state of considerable distress. The
grainy black-and-white film’s brutal contents heightened
the aura of methodical calm adopted by Shawcross in his
delivery as he traced the acts of Nazi aggression across
Europe. Starting with Poland in 1939, he moved on to 1940
and Belgium, Holland, France, and Luxembourg, then to
Greece and Yugoslavia in early 1941, and finally to Russia
in June 1941, Operation Barbarossa.
Shawcross’s legal arguments drew largely from
Lauterpacht’s draft. A great swath of the speech used the
Cambridge academic’s words to argue that the idea of
crimes against humanity was well established, that the
“community of nations” had long asserted “the right to
intercede on behalf of the violated rights of man trampled
upon by the State in a manner calculated to shock the
moral sense of mankind.” This part of the speech ran to
fifteen printed pages, twelve of which were written by
Lauterpacht. On crimes against humanity and the rights of
individuals, Shawcross spoke Lauterpacht’s exact words,
arguing forcefully that the tribunal should sweep aside the
tradition that sovereigns could act as they wished, free to
kill, maim, and torture their own people.
Lauterpacht prompted Shawcross to preempt the
arguments of the defendants, the prospect that they’d
assert that because states couldn’t commit crimes under
international law, it followed that the individuals who
served them also couldn’t be guilty of crimes. A state could
be criminal, Shawcross told the tribunal, and so it was
imperative to repress its crimes by means “more drastic
and more effective than in the case of individuals.”
Individuals who acted on behalf of such a state were
“directly responsible” and should have punishments heaped
upon them. Göring, Speer, and Frank were in his sights.
The core of the Shawcross argument belonged to
Lauterpacht. “The state is not an abstract entity,” the
British attorney general proclaimed, using a formulation
that would be repeated frequently before the tribunal and
long after. “Its rights and duties are the rights and duties of
men,” its actions those of politicians who should “not be
able to seek immunity behind the intangible personality of
the state.” These were radical words, embracing the ideas
of individual responsibility, placing “fundamental human
rights” and “fundamental human duties” at the heart of a
new international system. If this was an innovation,
Shawcross concluded, it was one to be defended.
Following Lauterpacht’s lead, Shawcross had made no
mention of genocide. As the attorney general spoke in
Nuremberg, Lauterpacht delivered a lecture in Cambridge
on the trial’s role in emphasizing the protection of
individuals. After the lecture, T. Ellis Lewis, a fellow of
Trinity Hall, sent a note of appreciation on a “capital
performance.” “You spoke with conviction, from your head
and your heart, and with the fairness one expects from a
lawyer who knows his subject.”
121
IN THE COURSE of the opening weeks of the trial, the judges
were presented with novel legal arguments and
unparalleled, ghastly evidence. Beyond documents such as
Frank’s diaries, grotesque artifacts were placed before
them—tattooed human skin, a shrunken head—and films
were projected onto the great white screen that hung at
the back of the courtroom. Hitler’s appearance in one short
film provoked a commotion among the defendants. “Can’t
you feel the terrific strength of his personality,” Ribbentrop
was heard to observe, “how he swept people off their feet?”
A force of personality, it was “erschütternd.” Staggering.
Other films prompted more subdued reactions, notably
the scenes shot in camps and ghettos across Europe. One
private film—made by a German soldier who participated in
a pogrom in Warsaw—offered an accompaniment of sorts,
according to The New Yorker magazine, “to texts read
aloud from the diary of Nazi Governor General Frank of
Poland.” Did the interplay of words and images cause
Frank to reflect on the wisdom of his actions in Warsaw or
the decision not to destroy his diaries? Did he recall
Hitler’s order that Warsaw be razed “to the ground”? Or
the self-congratulatory telegram he sent to the führer—
later found by the Soviets—evoking the wonder of a
Warsaw “wreathed in flames”? Or the finely bound report
prepared for him by the SS general Jürgen Stroop on the
destruction of the ghetto? Or his own visit to the Warsaw
ghetto, in the company of Curzio Malaparte? Or the girl in
the red dress, the one who smiled in the home movie that
he kept with him to the end of his reign?
If there was any such reflection, Frank’s face failed to
reveal it. He showed no emotion beyond an occasional
reflex of “strained attentiveness,” the eyes hidden behind
dark glasses. This was not because he felt shame, it seems,
but because he was concentrating on the legal arguments,
busily preparing notes of protest and reaction to such films.
The Warsaw film offered only one side of a more
complicated story, his lawyer, Seidl, told the judges and
asked that Frank be given the right to respond immediately.
The application was refused. Frank would have a chance to
address the tribunal, but not yet.
The films were watched by journalists as well as
observers in the public gallery. Over the course of the trial,
notable visitors included the likes of Fiorello La Guardia,
the former mayor of New York, writers such as Evelyn
Waugh and John Dos Passos, academics, military officials,
even actors. Visitors were attracted by the daily media
articles, the prospect of seeing the “theatrical energy” of
Hermann Göring, so resplendent in his “fancy clothes.” A
few family members of the judges and prosecutors sat in
the public gallery, and one among them was Enid
Lawrence, the twenty-one-year-old daughter of Lord Justice
Lawrence, who was presiding over the proceedings.
122
ENID LAWRENCE, who became Lady Dundas, known as Robby,
invited me to tea at her calm and orderly flat in Kensington.
She was one of the few people around who could offer a
firsthand account of the early days of the hearing. The
widow of a Battle of Britain hero, she spoke with a resigned
energy and clarity about her first visit to Nuremberg, in
December 1945, when she lodged with her parents. She
had kept a small pocket diary, into which entries were
written in pencil, and now she used it to refresh her
memory.
She traveled to Nuremberg on official business, she
explained, because she worked for the Allies during the
war, and after it ended, on the use of double agents. She
went to Nuremberg to interview the defendant Alfred Jodl,
a chief of operations for the Wehrmacht. “A nice enough
little man,” she said, and quite cooperative. He had no idea
the young woman who interviewed him was the daughter of
the presiding judge or that she spent her free time visiting
the sites of Nuremberg.
She admired her father, a “straightforward man”
untainted by ambition or ideology, with little interest in
theological debates about genocide or crimes against
humanity or fine distinctions between the protection of
groups or individuals. He was appointed at the insistence of
Winston Churchill, a fellow member of a private dining
group, the Other Club. The job, as her father saw it, was
simply to apply the law to the facts and to do so fairly and
speedily. He expected to be home within six months.
The presidency came to him by chance, Robby added,
because he was the only judge acceptable to all: “The
Russians didn’t want the Americans, the Americans didn’t
want the Russians or the French, the French didn’t want
the Russians.” Her father never wrote of the trial, not in
any detail, unlike Biddle, the American judge who wrote a
book, or Falco, the French judge who kept a diary that was
published only seventy years after the trial.
“My father disapproved of Biddle’s diary,” Robby said
sharply. Decisions made in private between the judges
should remain private.
She came to know the other judges. General
Nikitchenko? “Under the control of Moscow.” His alternate,
Lieutenant Colonel Volchkov, with whom she occasionally
danced, was “more human.” He taught her how to say “I
love you” in Russian (her father stayed in touch with
Volchkov after the trial, but one day the letters stopped,
and he was advised by the Foreign Office to keep a
distance). Donnedieu was old and “pretty much
unapproachable.” Her father was much closer to Falco, the
French alternate, and they became good friends after the
trial. He liked Biddle too, an educated “Ivy League–type
American.”
Of the prosecutors, the one Robby most admired was
Maxwell Fyfe, because he was “on top of everything,” a
committed lawyer who was present in the courtroom
throughout the trial. I took this to be a dig at Shawcross,
who dropped in on the hearings at key moments but wasn’t
generally around, unlike Jackson, who remained in
Nuremberg for a full year. Robby was reluctant to say
more, but she wasn’t the first to express a firm dislike of
Shawcross, seen by many as haughty and self-important,
even if a fine advocate.
In early December, Robby spent five days in courtroom
600. It was bigger than the English courtrooms, and
translation through headphones offered a novelty. The
scene was intensely male—every judge, every defendant,
every prosecutor. The only women were the stenographers
and translators (one, with a great stack of blond hair, was
known to the judges as “the passionate haystack”), and a
few journalists and writers.
She recalled the accused as “a memorable bunch.”
Göring stood out, because “he intended to,” very much the
leader. Hess was “very visible,” with “most peculiar”
behavior that included odd and constant facial movements.
Kaltenbrunner had a “long thin face, looked very cruel.”
Jodl was “nice-looking”; his boss Wilhelm Keitel “looked
like a general, a soldier.” Franz von Papen was “very goodlooking.” Ribbentrop got much press in London because of
his name recognition. Hjalmar Schacht was “distinguished
and tidy.” Albert Speer? “Simply extraordinary,” because of
his bearing and control. Streicher? “Absolutely horrible.”
Robby Dundas smiled as she said, “He looked horrible;
everything about him was horrible.”
—
Frank? Yes, she remembered Hans Frank, with his dark
glasses. He seemed insignificant, closed in on himself. The
British papers published a vicious image of him about that
time, she reminds me, drawn by the cartoonist David Low.
“Opinions might differ about the award of ‘nastiest-personpresent,’ ” Low wrote, but he was compelled to vote
without hesitation for Frank, “the butcher of Warsaw.” The
combination of the fixed sneer and quiet mutterings got
him the cartoonist’s vote.
“Was he the one who cried the whole time?” she asked
suddenly, which reminded me that others had spoken of
Frank’s tears. Yes, I said. She was in court on the day a film
about Hitler was projected, causing Ribbentrop and others
to weep uncontrollably.
Moments of horror remained vivid. She recalled the
evidence of a woman commandant from Dachau, the one
who “made lamp shades out of human skin.” She shook her
head gently as she spoke, as though trying to evict the
memory, and her voice dropped until it was barely
perceptible.
“Much of the time it was very boring, then something
would happen, and my reaction was horror.”
She stopped herself.
“It was horrific…”
She heard extracts from Stroop’s report for Frank, titled
The Warsaw Ghetto Is No More.
Sitting in the public gallery, she listened as extracts from
Frank’s diary were read out. “That we sentence 1,200,000
Jews to die of hunger should be noted only marginally”—
those words she heard.
She saw human skin said to have been taken from bodies
at Buchenwald. She remembered the talk of tattoos inked
into living flesh.
The evidence had a profound effect on Robby Dundas,
one that had persisted over seven decades. “I loathe the
Germans,” she said suddenly and most unexpectedly. “I
always have.” Then a hint of regret passed across her
demure face. “I am so sorry,” she said so quietly I almost
missed the words. “I just haven’t forgiven them.”
123
WHAT OF LEMKIN? Two months into a trial that had started
well enough for the ideas he was espousing, all his efforts
seemed to have evaporated into nothingness. Genocide was
referred to on the first day by the French and Soviet
prosecutors, much to his satisfaction. The Americans and
the British followed, but they avoided any mention of the
word. To Lemkin’s dismay, the rest of November and all of
December—thirty-one days of hearings—passed without the
word being spoken in court.
Lemkin followed developments from Washington, kept far
away from Nuremberg by Jackson’s team. It was frustrating
to read the daily transcripts as they reached the War
Crimes Office, where he worked as a consultant, to read
news reports that made no mention of genocide. Maybe it
was the southern senators who got to Jackson and his team,
fearful about the implications that the charge of genocide
might have in local politics, with the American Indians and
the blacks.
Jackson’s team took active steps to keep Lemkin away
from the trial. After the difficulties he’d caused in London
back in October, with his wayward behavior, this was no
surprise. Instead, his talents were directed to the
preparation of another war crimes trial, which was
expected to open in April 1946 in Tokyo. He was, however,
tasked with investigating the activities of Karl Haushofer, a
World War I German general who later became a Munich
academic, an acquaintance of the writer Stefan Zweig’s. It
was said that Haushofer laid the intellectual foundations
for the idea of Lebensraum, the need for greater living
space for Germans by the appropriation of the territory of
others, and that Rudolf Hess had been his research
assistant. Lemkin recommended that Haushofer be
prosecuted, but Jackson resisted on the grounds that his
activity was limited to “teaching and writing.” In due
course, the matter became moot after Haushofer and his
wife committed suicide.
On December 20, the tribunal broke for the Christmas
break. Donnedieu returned to his apartment on the
boulevard Saint-Michel in Paris, where he found a letter
waiting from Lemkin, along with a copy of Axis Rule. The
reply, received by Lemkin in January 1946, must have
ignited the Polish lawyer’s desire to find some way to
reinsert himself into the trial. “Maybe I will have the
pleasure of seeing you in Nuremberg,” the French judge
wrote enticingly. The two men had known each other since
the 1930s from League of Nations meetings. “I am so
pleased to have received your letter and its news,”
Donnedieu added, in a thin handwriting, surprised that
Lemkin’s letter took so long to arrive. “I am a judge at the
International Military Tribunal,” he went on, as though
Lemkin might not have known.
The Frenchman appreciated Lemkin’s book as an
“important” work. He hadn’t read every page, he admitted,
because his responsibilities only allowed time for a “skim”
read. But he did read chapter 9 and believed the word
“genocide” to be “very correct,” as a term that
“expressively” designated “the terrible crime that occupies
our Tribunal’s attention.” Lemkin would have been buoyed
by the words yet astute enough to recognize their
ambiguity. After all, Donnedieu was a man who felt able to
accept Frank’s invitation to visit him in Berlin in 1935.
“Alas, Poland has been the principal victim,” the French
judge continued. The formulation was curious, because the
judge had seen the evidence. Of course Poland was a
victim, but the principal victim? Perhaps he was being
polite to Lemkin, a Pole. Perhaps he didn’t know that
Lemkin was Jewish. Have you heard anything about “our
friend Rappaport”? the judge asked, referring to the Polish
Supreme Court judge, the man who warned Lemkin he
wouldn’t be traveling to Madrid in October 1933.
(Rappaport survived the war and was appointed president
of Poland’s Supreme National Tribunal, which conducted
the criminal trials of Amon Göth, made more famous by the
film Schindler’s List, Frank’s colleague Josef Bühler, and
the Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss—all sentenced to
death.)
Donnedieu mentioned that he’d lost a son-in-law in the
war, killed a year earlier, “in the Resistance,” and that he
was in touch with Vespasian Pella, who was in Geneva
writing a book about war crimes. Donnedieu’s letter went
to the address in London from which Lemkin had written a
few months earlier and from there was forwarded to
Washington. It reached Lemkin at the small apartment he
kept at the Wardman Park Hotel. If genocide was to get any
traction in the case, Lemkin knew he needed to get himself
to Nuremberg.
124
WHEN I FIRST RAISED the subject of how or when his father
learned what happened to his parents and other members
of the family in Lemberg and Żółkiew, Eli said rather
brusquely that he didn’t know. The subject was never
mentioned at home. “I suppose he wanted to protect me, so
I never asked.” It was a familiar silence, the one chosen by
Leon and many others, respected by those around them.
The unlikely chain of events that led to the reunion
between Lauterpacht and his niece Inka emerged only from
a conversation I had with Clara Kramer, who had been a
neighbor of the Lauterpachts’ in Żółkiew. One of her
companions when she was in hiding in Żółkiew was Mr.
Melman, who traveled to Lemberg after being freed to find
out who might have survived. He visited a Jewish welfare
committee, where he left a list of names, the few Jews
who’d survived in Żółkiew, who included some
Lauterpachts. This list was pinned to a wall of the
committee’s office, which Inka happened to visit after
leaving the convent that offered refuge during the German
occupation. She saw the Żółkiew names, made contact with
Mr. Melman, then went to Żółkiew. There she was
introduced to Clara Kramer.
“Melman came back with this beautiful beauty,” Clara
told me with emotion. “She was gorgeous, like a Madonna,
my first friend when I came out of hiding.” Inka, three
years younger than Clara, became her best friend, and they
remained close over many years, “like sisters.” Inka told
Clara about her uncle, a famous professor at Cambridge, a
man called Hersch Lauterpacht. They would try to find him
with the help of the Melmans and Mr. Patrontasch, another
Żółkiew survivor who was a classmate of Lauterpacht’s at
school in Lemberg back in 1913. The Melmans and Inka left
Soviet-occupied Poland for Austria, where they ended up in
a refugee camp near Vienna. At some point—Clara didn’t
recall the exact circumstances—Mr. Patrontasch learned
that Lauterpacht was involved in the Nuremberg trial.
Perhaps from a newspaper, Clara said. “Inka’s uncle is at
Nuremberg, and I will try to see him,” Mr. Patrontasch told
Mr. Melman.
Because he lived outside the camp, Patrontasch was able
to travel freely. “He agreed to look for the famous professor
Lauterpacht,” Clara explained. He traveled to Nuremberg,
where he stood outside the entrance of the Palace of
Justice, guarded by tanks. He waited, unable to gain entry,
not wishing to make a fuss.
“They wouldn’t let him in,” Clara added, “so he just stood
there, day after day, for three weeks. Every time a civilian
came out, he whispered, ‘Hersch Lauterpacht,’ ‘Hersch
Lauterpacht.’ ” Clara used her body to describe the actions
of Artur Patrontasch, cupping her soft hands. She spoke so
quietly I could barely hear. “Hersch Lauterpacht, Hersch
Lauterpacht, Hersch Lauterpacht.”
At some point, a passerby heard the whispers and,
recognizing the name, stopped to tell Patrontasch he knew
Lauterpacht. “That was how Inka found her uncle.” From
this initial connection, direct contact followed several
weeks later. Clara couldn’t remember the month, but it was
during the opening days of the trial. Just before the end of
the year, in December 1945, Lauterpacht received a
telegram with information about the family. There were no
details, but enough information to offer hope. “I hope that
at least the child is alive,” Lauterpacht wrote on New
Year’s Eve to Rachel in Palestine. Early in 1946, he learned
that Inka was the only family member to survive. A few
weeks passed, then in the spring letters began to pass
directly between Inka and Lauterpacht.
Clara asked whether she might share another thought
with me. She was reluctant, she said, because she was
talking to an Englishman.
“To tell you the truth, there was a moment I hated the
British worse than the Germans.” She apologized. Why? I
inquired.
“The Germans said they would kill me, and they tried.
Then, much later, I was sitting in a displaced persons camp
and wanted to go to Palestine, and the British wouldn’t let
me. For a time, I hated them as much as I hated the
Germans.”
She smiled, adding that her views had changed since
then. “I was seventeen; you were allowed such feelings.”
125
EARLY IN 1946, Frank found himself a confidant. In the
absence of his wife, Brigitte, or his mistress, Lilly Grau, his
new interlocutor was Dr. Gustave Gilbert, the U.S. Army
psychologist charged with keeping an eye on Frank’s
mental and spiritual health. Gilbert kept a diary in which he
described many conversations, publishing long extracts
after the trial was over (Nuremberg Diary, published in
1947).
Frank trusted the psychologist, feeling comfortable
enough to discuss many of the matters that occupied his
thoughts, both personal and professional. He talked about
his wife and mistress, of suicide and Catholicism, of the
führer (“Can you imagine a man cold-bloodedly planning
the whole thing?”). He shared vivid dreams, including
inexplicable, violent sexual fantasies that occasionally led
to “nocturnal emissions” (this was how Dr. Gilbert referred
to them). Gilbert was not averse to sharing the confidences
he picked up with others; at a dinner party at Robert
Jackson’s home, he told Judge Biddle that there were three
“homos” among the defendants, one of whom was Frank.
During the Christmas recess, Dr. Gilbert paid a routine
visit to Frank in his small cell. The former governor-general
was busily preparing his defense, apparently bothered by
his decision not to destroy the diaries, which were being
used to great effect by the prosecutors. So why didn’t you
destroy them? Dr. Gilbert inquired.
“I listened to…the Bach Oratorio, ‘The Passion of St.
Matthew,’ ” Frank told the American. “When I heard the
voice of Christ, something seemed to say to me: ‘What?
Face the enemy with a false face? You cannot hide the truth
from God!’ No, the truth must come out, once and for all.”
Bach’s monumental work was quite frequently evoked by
Frank, offering solace with its message of mercy and
forgiveness.
The reference prompted me to attend a number of
performances of the Matthew Passion in London and New
York, and even a performance at the St. Thomas Church in
Leipzig, where Bach had written the work. I wanted to
understand which parts of the work Frank might have had
in mind, how he had drawn solace in the prison cell. The
most familiar aria was “Erbarme dich, Mein Gott, um
meiner Zähren willen,” sung by Peter. “Have mercy, my
God, for my tears’ sake.” Dr. Gilbert might have understood
that Peter was weeping for the weakness of the individual,
expressing a contrition that begged for mercy, speaking on
behalf of humanity as a whole. Did Frank appreciate Bach’s
intent? If he had, he would surely have chosen another
work. A decade earlier, he’d railed in Berlin against the
idea of individuals having rights; now he took refuge in a
musical work that famously embraced the individual’s right
to redemption.
Dr. Gilbert raised the subject of Frank’s conversion to
Catholicism in his cell in the days before the trial began.
Frank mumbled about feelings of responsibility, the need to
be truthful. Might it not be more of a hysterical symptom, a
reaction to the feelings of guilt? Frank didn’t respond to
the suggestion. The American psychologist sensed a
residue of positive feelings toward the Nazi regime, yet
also a feeling of enmity toward Hitler. In early January,
Frank’s lawyer asked if the Vatican was helping the
prosecution and whether Frank should leave the church.
The issue caused Frank to reflect.
“It is as though I am two people,” Frank said as Dr.
Gilbert listened. “Me, myself, Frank here—and the other
Frank, the Nazi leader.” Was Frank playing a game or being
truthful? Dr. Gilbert wondered silently.
“Sometimes I wonder how that man Frank could have
done those things. This Frank looks at the other Frank and
says, ‘Hmm, what a louse you are Frank!—How could you
do such things?—You certainly let your emotions run away
with you, didn’t you?’ ”
Dr. Gilbert said nothing.
“I am sure as a psychologist you must find that very
interesting.—Just as if I were two different people. I am
here, myself—and that other Frank of the big Nazi
speeches over there on trial.”
Still Gilbert remained silent. The less he spoke, the more
Frank talked.
“Fascinating, isn’t it?” Frank said, slightly desperately.
Fascinating and schizoid, Gilbert thought, and no doubt
designed to save Frank from the rope.
126
OVER THE NEXT MONTH, the trial moved from matters of
general evidence to individual accounts as witnesses
appeared to offer personal, firsthand testimony. One such
witness
was
Samuel
Rajzman,
a
Polish-speaking
accountant, a lone survivor from Treblinka.
—
I found Rajzman’s account to be especially compelling and
personal, because Treblinka was where Malke was
murdered. Leon learned of the details only at the end of his
life, when my mother showed him a book that contained a
long list of the names of those detained at Theresienstadt.
Among the thousands was the name of Malke Buchholz,
with the detail that she was transported from
Theresienstadt to Treblinka on September 23, 1942. Leon
retired to the privacy of his room, along with the volume,
where my mother heard him weep. The next day, he said
nothing more about the book. Of Treblinka, he never spoke,
not in my presence.
Samuel Rajzman appeared in the witness box on the
morning of February 27, 1946, introduced to the judges as
a man who had “returned from the other world.” He wore a
dark suit and tie, peered through spectacles. His angular,
lined face offered a sense of astonishment and
bemusement, that he was alive, seated just a few feet from
Frank, in whose territory Treblinka was located. To look at
the man, one would not know the path he traveled or the
horrors he witnessed.
He spoke in a measured and calm voice of the journey
from the Warsaw ghetto in August 1942, transportation by
rail in inhumane conditions, eight thousand people in
overcrowded cattle cars. He was the only survivor. When
the Russian prosecutor asked about the moment of arrival,
Rajzman told him how they were made to undress and walk
along Himmelfahrtstrasse, the “street to heaven,” a short
walk to the gas chamber, when suddenly a friend from
Warsaw singled him out and led him away. The Germans
needed an interpreter, but before that he loaded the clothes
of the dead onto empty trains that departed Treblinka. Two
days passed, then a transport arrived from the small town
of Vinegrova, bringing his mother, sister, and brothers. He
watched them walk to the gas chambers, unable to
intervene. Several days later, he was handed his wife’s
papers, with a photograph of his wife and child.
“That is all I have left of my family,” he said in the
courtroom, a public act of revelation. “A photograph.”
He offered a graphic account of killing on an industrial
scale, individual acts of horror and inhumanity. A ten-yearold girl was brought to the Lazarett (infirmary) with her
two-year-old sister, guarded by a German called Willi
Mentz, a milkman with a small black mustache (Mentz later
returned to the job, which he held until sentenced to life
imprisonment at the Treblinka trial, held in Germany in
1965). The older girl threw herself onto Mentz as he
removed his gun. Why did he want to kill the little girl?
Rajzman described how he watched Mentz pick up the twoyear-old, walk the short distance to a crematorium, and
throw her into an oven. Then he killed the sister.
The defendants listened in silence, two rows of shamed
faces. Did Frank seem to slump?
Rajzman continued in a flat monotone. An aged woman
was brought to the Lazarett with her daughter, who was in
labor, made to lie on a plot of grass. Guards watched her
give birth. Mentz asked the grandmother which one she’d
prefer to see killed first. The older woman begged to be the
first.
“Of course, they did the opposite,” Rajzman told the
courtroom, speaking very quietly. “The newborn baby was
killed first, then the child’s mother, and finally the
grandmother.”
Rajzman talked of conditions at the camp, of the fake
railway station. The deputy commander, Kurt Franz, built a
first-class railroad station with false signs. Later an
imaginary restaurant was added, and schedules were listed
with times of departures and arrivals. Grodno, Suwałki,
Vienna, Berlin. It was like a film set. To calm people,
Rajzman explained, “so there should not be any incidents.”
The purpose was psychological, to offer reassurance as
the end approached?
“Yes.” Rajzman’s voice remained calm, flat.
How many were exterminated each day? Between ten
and twelve thousand.
How was it done? Initially, by three gas chambers, then
ten more.
Rajzman described how he was on the platform when
Sigmund Freud’s three sisters arrived. It was September
23, 1942. He saw Commander Kurt Franz deal with one of
the sisters’ request for special treatment.
After reading this transcript of the trial, with the details
of the arrival of the Freud sisters from Theresienstadt, I
searched for the details of the transport on which the
Freud sisters arrived. When I found them, I looked at the
other names on the list, a thousand of them, and eventually
I found the name of Malke Buchholz. Rajzman must have
been on the platform when she arrived.
127
I DECIDED TO VISIT Treblinka, or what remained. The
opportunity came with an invitation to give two lectures in
Poland, one in Kraków, the other in Warsaw, which was only
an hour from the Treblinka site. The Kraków lecture was at
the Allerhand Institute, named in honor of the professor
who taught Lauterpacht and Lemkin, murdered in Lemberg
for the crime of inquiring of a guard whether he had a soul.
In Warsaw, I gave a lecture at the Polish Institute of
International Affairs. Both events were well attended, with
numerous questions about Lauterpacht and Lemkin. Issues
of identity dominated. Would I say they are Poles or Jews,
or both? Did it matter? I answered.
In Warsaw, I met a Polish legal historian, Adam Redzik,
who talked to me of Stanislaw Starzynski, the Lemberg
professor who taught Lauterpacht and Lemkin. He believed
Starzynski should be credited for inadvertently saving
Lauterpacht, because he’d supported another candidate for
appointment to the chair of international law in Lwów in
1923. It was Professor Redzik who gave me the photograph
of the Lemberg professors, an image taken in 1912,
eighteen men, each with mustache or beard, Makarewicz
included, along with Allerhand and Longchamps de Bérier,
who would be murdered by the Germans in Lemberg.
At the Warsaw lecture, Adam Rotfeld, a former Polish
foreign minister, sat in the audience. Later he and I talked
about Lwów, near the town of Przemyślany, where he was
born. We touched on minority rights, the 1919 treaty,
pogroms against Jews, Nuremberg. Yes, he told me,
Makarewicz probably was the teacher who inspired
Lauterpacht and Lemkin. How ironic, he mused, that a man
with such strong nationalist sympathies should be the
person to catalyze the conflict between Lauterpacht and
Lemkin, between individuals and groups.
Later my son and I visited the new Warsaw Uprising
Museum. One room was dominated by a large black-andwhite photograph of the Frank family, spread across an
entire wall. I knew the image, which had been sent to me a
few months earlier by Niklas Frank. He was three years old
then, dressed in a checkered black-and-white outfit and
shiny black shoes, holding his mother’s hand. He stood with
his back to his father; he looked sad, as though he wanted
to be somewhere else.
From Warsaw, my son and I traveled by car to Treblinka.
The landscape was dull, flat, gray. Turning off the main
highway, we passed thickening woods, villages, and
churches. A single wooden structure, a house or a barn,
occasionally broke the monotony. We stopped at a
marketplace to buy dry biscuits and a pot of flowers,
bloodred. In the car was a map that showed Treblinka to be
on the route to Wołkowysk.
Nothing tangible remained of the camp at Treblinka,
hastily destroyed by the Germans as they departed. There
was a modest museum that held a few photographs and
documents, tired and grainy, a cheap model of the camp,
reconstructed from the memories of the few survivors. A
handful of government decrees floated behind protective
glass, some with Frank’s signature, one authorizing the
penalty of death in October 1941.
Another document was signed by Franz Stangl, the
commandant, the subject of a disquieting book by the
writer Gitta Sereny. Alongside Stangl’s signature was the
familiar round stamp of the General Government.
Treblinka, September 26, 1943. Here was irrefutable
evidence that Frank’s authority encompassed the camp. A
black sign, indelible and definitive as to the matter of
responsibility.
Nothing else remained. Yet when the camp was
discovered by the Soviets, Vasily Grossman’s article “The
Hell of Treblinka” offered another account, immediate and
brutal. “We tread the earth of Treblinka,” he wrote,
“casting up fragments of bone, teeth, sheets of paper,
clothes, things of all kinds. The earth does not want to keep
secrets.” That was September 1944.
The entrance led to a path of earth and flattened grass,
with concrete sleepers tracing the railway line along which
Rajzman, the Freud sisters, and Malke traveled to the
terminus point of their lives, a platform. Gone were the
half-rotted shirts and penknives of which Grossman wrote,
gone were the child’s shoes with red pom-poms. The mugs,
passports, photographs, and ration cards were no longer
present, buried in a forest later cleared for symbolic
railway sleepers and a platform, taking the imagination on
an inner journey.
Under the endless gray sky, a memorial of roughly hewn
rocks was laid, hundreds of them, like gravestones, or
snowdrops, set into the earth. Each marked a hamlet, a
village or town, a city or region from which a million
individuals were brought. It was a place of reflection,
dominated by the sky as it was then, framed by green firs
that reached upward. The forest was silent, a keeper of
secrets.
Later, we made our way to a nearby town, looking for
food. We passed the abandoned Treblinka town train
station, a couple of miles from the camp, the one used by
Willi Mentz and other German and Ukrainian workers.
Nearby was the town of Brok, a place to have lunch in a sad
restaurant. A radio played quietly in the background, a
familiar tune cutting across the room, a song written in the
1990s, during riots in Los Angeles. “Don’t dwell on what
has passed away, or what is yet to be.”
Leonard Cohen was popular these days in Poland, with
his message. There was a crack in everything; that’s how
the light got in.
128
THE CONCLUSION OF Samuel Rajzman’s testimony coincided
with a new phase of the trial. Göring was the first of the
defendants to set out his case, in March 1946. As Frank’s
turn approached, he knew he faced a real challenge to save
himself from the gallows, that it would be no easy matter.
The diaries had been used to “spike” him, The New Yorker
reported, frequently invoked by the Soviets.
On Thursday, April 18, Frank got his day in court. He
followed Alfred Rosenberg, who attempted to persuade the
tribunal that the word “extermination” did not mean what
it literally said, and most certainly it did not refer to mass
killing. Rudolf Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz,
appeared as a witness for Rosenberg, offering a detailed
account of the gassing and burning of “at least 2,500,000
victims” over three years. As Höss spoke without regret or
emotion, Frank listened attentively. Privately, Höss told Dr.
Gilbert that the dominant attitude at Auschwitz was of total
indifference. Any other sentiment “never even occurred to
us.”
Against this backdrop, Frank could hope he’d come
across as thoughtful and deliberate, rather less guilty than
the neighbor who sat to his right, if such matters could be
measured on a scale. Up to the moment of his appearance
on the stand, he was torn, not knowing whether to offer a
robust defense of his actions or to take a more subtle
approach, one that pleaded ignorance to some of the
horrors. Another option, not to be excluded, would be to
express some degree of responsibility. What had he decided
as he made his way to the stand?
All eyes were on him, without dark glasses, hiding his
damaged left hand. He seemed nervous, slightly selfconscious. Occasionally, he looked toward the other
defendants, who now sat to his right, as though seeking
their approval (which was not forthcoming). Dr. Seidl asked
a few questions about Frank’s career up to the moment he
was appointed governor-general. Seidl was tentative.
Reading the transcript, watching what I could find by way
of newsreel, I had the impression—developed from my own
courtroom experience—that Dr. Seidl didn’t know what
surprise his client might spring in response to questions.
Frank got into his stride. He spoke with increasing
confidence in a strong, loud voice. I imagined him on a
different kind of platform. Dr. Seidl asked about Frank’s
role in Poland after his appointment by Hitler. “I bear the
responsibility,” Frank responded.
“Do you feel guilty of having committed…crimes against
humanity?”
“That is a question that the Tribunal has got to decide.”
Frank explained that five months into the trial he had
learned things of which he had not been fully aware,
perhaps a reference to Höss. He now had “a full insight”
into the horrible atrocities committed. “I am possessed by a
deep sense of guilt.”
It sounded like an admission of sorts and a warning to Dr.
Seidl. The other defendants heard his words in that way; so
did others in the courtroom.
Did you introduce Jewish ghettos? Yes.
Did you introduce badges to mark the Jews? Yes.
Did you yourself introduce forced labor in the General
Government? Yes.
Did you know of the conditions in Treblinka, Auschwitz,
and other camps? This was a dangerous question. Frank
heard Rajzman give evidence, and the witness testimony of
Höss, so terrible. So he sidestepped.
“Auschwitz was not in the area of the Government
General.” Strictly speaking, this was correct, although it
was close enough to Kraków, where he worked, to be able
to smell the place.
“I was never in Maidanek, nor in Treblinka, nor in
Auschwitz.”
There was no way of knowing whether that was true. The
attentive judges must have noted the brief evasion, that he
hadn’t answered the question posed.
Did you ever participate in the annihilation of Jews?
Frank reflected, his face quizzical. He offered a carefully
crafted response.
“I say ‘yes,’ and the reason why I say ‘yes’ is because,
having lived through the five months of this trial, and
particularly after having heard the testimony of the witness
Hoess, my conscience does not allow me to throw the
responsibility solely on these minor people.”
The words caused a commotion among the defendants,
which he must have noticed. He wanted to be clear about
what he was saying: he never personally installed an
extermination camp or promoted their existence.
Nevertheless, Hitler had laid a dreadful responsibility on
his people, so it was his responsibility too. One step
forward, one step back.
The words in his diaries were read out.
“We have fought against Jewry for years.” These words
he was bound to recognize. Yes, he’d made “the most
horrible utterances”; the diaries bore witness against him,
no escaping that.
“Therefore, it is no more than my duty to answer your
question in this connection with ‘yes.’ ” The courtroom was
silent. Then he said, “A thousand years will pass and still
this guilt of Germany will not have been erased.”
This was too much for some defendants. Göring was seen
to shake his head in disgust, whisper to a neighbor, pass a
note along the dock. Another defendant expressed
displeasure that Frank associated his individual guilt with
that of the entire German people. There was a difference
between the responsibility of the individual and that of the
group. Some who heard this last comment might have
noted its irony.
“Did you hear him say that Germany is disgraced for a
thousand years?” Fritz Sauckel whispered to Göring.
“Yes, I heard it.” The contempt toward Frank was
apparent. He would not have an easy evening.
“I suppose Speer will say the same thing,” Göring added.
Frank and Speer were weak-kneed. Cowards.
During the lunch break, Dr. Seidl encouraged Frank to
refine his expression of guilt, to narrow it down. Frank
declined the request. “I am glad I got it out, and I’ll let it go
at that.” Later he suggested to Dr. Gilbert that he was
hopeful that he might have done enough to avoid the
gallows. “I did know what was going on. I think the judges
are really impressed when one of us speaks from his heart
and doesn’t try to dodge the responsibility. Don’t you think
so? I was really gratified at the way they were impressed by
my sincerity.”
Other defendants were contemptuous. Speer doubted
Frank’s honesty. “I wonder what he would have said if he
hadn’t turned in his diary,” he said. Hans Fritzsche was
bothered that Frank associated his guilt with that of the
German people. “He is more guilty than any of us,” he told
Speer. “He really knows about those things.”
Rosenberg, who had spent five months sitting alongside
Frank, was appalled. “ ‘Germany is disgraced for a
thousand years’? That is going pretty far!”
Ribbentrop told Dr. Gilbert that no German should say
that his country was disgraced for a thousand years.
“I wonder how genuine it was?” Jodl asked.
Admiral Karl Dönitz shared Fritzsche’s concerns. Frank
should only have spoken as an individual, for himself. It
was not for him to speak for the Germans as a whole.
After lunch, Dr. Seidl asked a few more questions, then
the American prosecutor Thomas Dodd took over, raising
the subject of looted art. Frank considered the suggestion
that he was involved in any wrongdoing offensive.
“I did not collect pictures and I did not find time during
the war to appropriate art treasures.” All the art was
registered, remaining in Poland to the end. That wasn’t
true, Dodd said, reminding him about the Dürer etchings
taken from Lemberg. Before my time, Frank retorted. What
about the paintings he took to Germany in 1945, what
about the Leonardo?
“I was safeguarding them, but not for myself.” They were
widely known; no one could appropriate them. “You cannot
steal a ‘Mona Lisa.’ ” This was a reference to Cecilia
Gallerani. At one end of the dock, Göring was deadpan; at
the other end, some defendants were seen to grin.
129
FRANK’S APPROACH GENERATED a buzz around the Palace of
Justice. Yves Beigbeder, who was in court that day,
confirmed that to me. Now ninety-one, he was retired and
living in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, after a distinguished
career at the United Nations and writing several works on
international criminal law. He was still affected by Frank’s
testimony, heard when he was a twenty-two-year-old law
graduate, working as legal secretary for his uncle, the
French judge Donnedieu.
Donnedieu never spoke to his nephew about the trial, not
even during the lunch break. “My uncle was very reserved;
I could ask any questions, but he expressed no views to me
at all. My aunt was the same; she just kept very quiet.”
Beigbeder had no recollection of meeting Lauterpacht or
Lemkin but knew both by name and repute, even then, and
the arguments each was pursuing. Yet he didn’t focus on
the battle of ideas that divided the two Lemberg men, the
individual and the group. “I was too young and ignorant!”
Now, many years later, he recognized its importance and
vitality, a starting point for modern international law.
Donnedieu and Falco sometimes talked about Lemkin in a
lighthearted way. The man had an “obsession” with
genocide; that he remembered them saying.
Frank presented his defense a month after Beigbeder had
arrived in Nuremberg. There were rumors he’d adopt a
different approach from the others, so Beigbeder made
sure he was in court. On his recollection, Frank was the
only defendant to recognize any degree of responsibility.
That made an impression, causing Beigbeder to write an
article for a French Protestant periodical, Réforme, an
“unexpected acknowledgment of guilt.”
“Frank seemed to accept a certain responsibility,” he told
me. “It was not complete, of course, but the fact that he
recognized a certain responsibility was important, and
different, and we all noticed that.”
I asked about his uncle’s connection with Frank. Did
Donnedieu ever mention that he’d known Frank in the
1930s, even visited Berlin at Frank’s invitation? The
questions elicited only a silence, then, “What do you
mean?” I told him of Donnedieu’s trip to Berlin to speak at
the Akademie für Deutsches Recht. Later I sent a copy of
the speech Donnedieu gave that day, ironically enough
titled “The Punishment of International Crimes.” Frank
responded to Donnedieu’s ideas with an attack, “a great
source of danger and unclearness.” I also sent a
photograph, evidently a real surprise to Beigbeder. “I did
not know until you told me that my uncle already knew
Hans Frank. That is most surprising.”
Frank and Donnedieu had a mutual interest in keeping
their connection under wraps. Judge Falco knew, however,
noting in his diary that his French colleague had dined with
Frank and had even met Julius Streicher. The Soviets also
knew, objecting to the appointment of Donnedieu as a
judge. Le Populaire, a French socialist newspaper, ran an
article with a neat headline: “A Nazi Judge on the
Nuremberg Tribunal.”
130
FRANK’S LAST DAY on the stand was Good Friday, the day after
the Matthew Passion was usually performed in Leipzig at
the St. Thomas Church. Dodd wrote to his wife in America
that he’d expected Frank to be “ornery,” given the “wicked”
record in Poland, yet in the end there was no need for
much cross-examination. Frank had practically admitted his
guilt, one of the more dramatic moments of the trial.
“He has become a Catholic,” Dodd wrote, “and I guess it
took.”
Frank was calm. He’d paid his dues, passed through the
black gates, felt optimistic. The French, British, and
American judges must have appreciated his candor. God
was a generous host, he told Dr. Gilbert, who asked what
had caused him to take the direction he chose.
A newspaper article was “the last straw,” Frank
explained.
“A few days ago I read a notice in the newspaper that Dr.
Jacoby, a Jewish lawyer in Munich, who was one of my
father’s best friends, had been exterminated in Auschwitz.
Then when Hoess testified how he exterminated two and a
half million Jews, I realized that he was the man who coldly
exterminated my father’s best friend—a fine, upright,
kindly old man—and millions of innocent people like him,
and I had done nothing to stop it! True, I didn’t kill him
myself, but the things I said and the things Rosenberg said
made those things possible!”
—
Like his wife, Brigitte, he took comfort in the belief that
he’d not killed anyone personally. Perhaps that would save
him.
PART IX
The Girl Who Chose Not to Remember
Credit p9.1
131
LEON CHOSE the path of silence. Nothing was said of Malke,
his sisters Laura and Gusta, the family in Lemberg and
Żółkiew, or the other family members in Vienna, including
his four nieces.
One of the four nieces was Herta, the eleven-year-old
daughter of sister Laura, who was to travel to Paris with
Miss Tilney and my mother in the summer of 1939, but did
not do so. Leon never spoke of her.
He said nothing either of his sister Gusta and her
husband, Max, who remained in Vienna until December
1939.
I knew little about Gusta and Max’s three daughters—
Daisy, the eldest, Edith, the youngest, and the middle child,
also called Herta—save that they had managed to leave
Vienna in September 1938. The three made their way to
Palestine, and in the 1950s my mother was in touch with
two of them.
As my mother and I were preparing to make the first trip
to Lviv, she evoked the memory of these three sisters,
Leon’s nieces, “long gone.” Two of them, Edith and Herta,
had children; perhaps they might be worth tracking down. I
had a distant memory of that generation, from childhood,
but nothing more.
Now I would try to locate them, to hear their stories.
Names and old addresses eventually threw up a phone
number, which led me to Doron, the son of Herta, the
middle child of Gusta and Max. Doron lived in Tel Aviv, and
he sprang a surprise: his mother, Leon’s niece Herta, was
alive and well, living nearby in a retirement home with a
fine view over the Mediterranean. She was a lively, active
ninety-two-year-old who played bridge every day and
completed at least two crosswords each week in German.
There was a difficulty, Doron added. She had steadfastly
refused to talk to him about events before the war,
declining to say much about life in Vienna before December
1938, when she left. He had little information and knew
almost nothing about that period. “A mystery,” he called it.
As far as I could tell, she was the only person alive who was
in Vienna with Malke and Leon who might have memories.
She wouldn’t talk, but perhaps her memory could be
jogged. Perhaps she recalled the wedding of Leon and Rita
in the spring of 1937, or my mother’s birth a year later, or
the circumstances of her own departure from Vienna. She
may be able to shed light on Leon’s life in Vienna.
She agreed to meet with me. Whether she would talk
about that period was another matter.
Two weeks later, I stood outside Herta Gruber’s front
door in Tel Aviv, accompanied by her son Doron. It opened
to reveal a diminutive, well-preserved lady with a splendid
head of dyed red hair. She had prepared herself, dressed in
a crisp white shirt, a gash of freshly applied deep red
lipstick running across her mouth, under eyebrows arched
in brown pencil.
I spent two days in the company of Herta, surrounded by
family photographs, documents, and pictures of Vienna
from the 1930s. I had brought them from London, hoping to
jog her memory. She had her own documents, including a
small album that held many family photographs that were
new to me.
The first was taken in 1926, when she was six, her first
day at school, standing outside Max’s liquor store. The
summer of 1935, a holiday on the Plattensee. Winter 1936,
a school holiday in the ski resort of Bad Aussee. A
handsome boyfriend, photographed in 1936. The following
summer, with friends in a field in the south Tyrol, picking
flowers. Holidays in Döbling and on the Dalmatian coast of
Yugoslavia, 1937. An image in Vienna, taken in a municipal
park, near a boating lake, early 1938, before the Anschluss.
The life of a comfortable, happy teenager.
Then the Germans arrived and the Nazis took over; life
was interrupted. The pages that followed include a family
photograph, Herta with her parents and two sisters, just
before she left Vienna. Grandmother Malke was in the
picture, shortly to be left on her own. Then a page on which
Herta had written the date—September 29, 1938—the day
of departure from Vienna. She left with her younger sister,
Edith, traveled by train from Vienna to Brindisi in southern
Italy. From there, they took a ship to Palestine.
Tucked into these pages was an undated photograph of
her cousin, also called Herta, the only child of Leon’s sister
Laura. A girl I hadn’t seen before, in glasses, standing
anxiously next to a doll with long braided hair, placed on
the street. Both wore a hat. This was the Herta who stayed
behind, a last-minute decision, the girl who couldn’t bear to
be separated from her mother, who decided that Herta
would not travel with Miss Tilney. Two years later, she and
her mother were dead in the ghetto in Lodz.
Credit 131.1
Herta Rosenblum, ca. 1938 (cousin of Herta Gruber)
There were pictures of Leon. A portrait on his wedding
day, without the bride, taken by Simonis, a well-known
society studio. Four photographs of my mother, taken in
Vienna, during the first year of her life, in the arms of
Malke. It was a tender image, new to me. Malke looked
weary, with a tired face.
132
HERTA’S COMPORTMENT COULD best be described as neutral.
She was neither happy nor unhappy to see me. I was simply
there. She remembered Uncle Leon, pleased to talk about
him, warming up, her eyes alive. Yes, she said, I know who
you are, his grandson. This was treated as a point of fact,
not accompanied by any hint of emotion. Indeed, at no
point in the course of the two days we spent together did
she indicate sadness or happiness or any other sentiments
that lie between the extremes. There was another curiosity:
in the many hours we spent together, Herta didn’t ask me a
single question.
Credit 132.1
Malke and Ruth, 1938
Early in the conversation it emerged that Herta knew
nothing about what happened to her parents. She knew
they were dead, but not how or when. I asked her if she
wanted to know what happened to them.
“Does he know?” The question was put to her son, not to
me. She seemed surprised at the prospect of new
information.
“He says he knows,” Doron replied. They spoke in
Hebrew; I could only infer the gentleness with which he
answered.
I broke the silence and asked her son if she wanted to
know.
“Ask her,” Doron said, with a shrug of the shoulder.
Yes, she replied, she wanted the details, all of them.
Many years had passed between the events I described
and our coming together in Herta’s small apartment in Tel
Aviv. Your parents were murdered, I told her, seventy years
ago, after you and your sisters left Vienna. The
circumstances were terribly unlucky. I discovered that
Gusta and Max found places on a steamship, the Uranus,
which was to sail down the Danube toward Bratislava,
taking them and several hundred other Jewish émigrés
toward the Black Sea. From there, they would take another
boat to Palestine.
The Uranus left Vienna in December 1939, but the
journey was interrupted by a confluence of unfortunate
events, natural and unnatural, of ice and occupation. By the
end of the year, the boat had reached Kladovo, a town in
Yugoslavia (now in Serbia). Further passage was blocked
by the ice that came with a freakish, cold winter. Gusta and
Max spent a frozen winter on board the crowded boat, not
allowed to disembark for several months, until the
following spring. They were then taken to a camp near
Kladovo, where they remained for several months. In
November 1940, they boarded another boat, which
returned toward Vienna, back up the Danube, to the town
of Šabac, near Belgrade. That was where they happened to
be in April 1941, when Germany attacked and occupied
Yugoslavia. There they remained, unable to travel on.
In due course, they were detained under the authority of
the Germans. The men and women were separated. Max
was taken to Zasavica, in Serbia, to a field where he was
lined up and shot with the other men from the boat. It was
October 12, 1942. Gusta survived a few more weeks, then
she was transported to the Sajmište concentration camp,
near Belgrade. It was there that she was killed, on a day
unknown, in the autumn of 1942.
Herta listened attentively to this account, which I shared
with some anxiety. When I had finished, I waited to see if
she had any questions, but there were none. She had heard
and understood. She chose this moment to offer an
explanation of her approach to the past, to silence and
remembrance.
“I want you to know that it’s not correct that I have
forgotten everything.”
That is what she said, her eyes fixed firmly on mine.
“It is just that I decided a very long time ago that this
was a period that I did not wish to remember. I have not
forgotten. I have chosen not to remember.”
133
OVER THE COURSE of those two days, photographs from her
album and others loaded on my laptop had caused Herta’s
memory to open up a little. Initially, it was as though there
were no light, then a flicker, a glow, intermittent
illumination. Herta remembered a few things, but others
were buried too deep to emerge.
I showed her a picture of Laura, her aunt, her mother’s
sister. No memory. Then a wedding photograph, Leon and
Rita, a picture of the temple where they married. These
images too made no impression. She said she didn’t
remember, although she must have attended the wedding.
Rita’s name meant nothing to her. Rita, I say, Regina, but
there was no flicker of recognition, nothing. No, I don’t
remember. It was as though Rita never existed. Herta had
no memory of the birth of my mother in July 1938, a couple
of months before she left for Brindisi. She knew Leon had a
child, but nothing more.
Other memories did return, but hardly a rush.
Herta’s face lit up when I showed a photograph of Malke.
My grandmother, she said, “a very, very kind woman,”
although “not so tall.” Herta recognized an image of the
building on Klosterneuburger Strasse where they lived, at
No. 69. She recalled the interior (“three bedrooms and
another for the maid, a large dining room where the family
would gather for meals”). The subject of family meals
catalyzed another memory, one that her son had previously
shared with me, of being made to eat with a book lodged
under each arm, to keep her arms straight as she ate.
I put a photograph of the building before her, taken a few
months earlier, when I visited with my daughter. It hasn’t
changed, she said. She pointed to a large window on the
corner of the first floor.
“From that room, my mother waved to me every morning,
when I went off to school.”
Her father’s shop was on the ground floor. She pointed to
the windows, described the interior in detail. The bottles,
the glasses, the smell. The friendly customers.
Now she was almost expansive, remembering summer
holidays on Austrian lakes, skiing holidays at Bad Aussee
(“wonderful”), trips to the Burgtheater and the Wiener
Staatsoper (“glamorous and exciting”). Yet when I showed
her a picture of a street near her home that was bedecked
in swastikas, she claimed to have no memory of such a
scene. It was as though everything from March 1938 had
been rubbed out. She was the same age as Inge Trott, who
remembered the arrival of the German army and the Nazi
takeover. Herta remembered none of that.
Digging deep, with some prompting, she remembered a
place called Lemberg and a trip by train to visit Malke’s
family. Żółkiew rang a bell, but she couldn’t recall if she’d
visited.
Leon’s name produced the most vivid of family memories.
She described him as “beloved,” her uncle Leon, like an
older brother, only sixteen years older than she. He was
always around, a constant presence.
“He was so nice, I loved him.” She stopped herself,
surprised by what she had just said. Then she said it again,
in case I missed it. “I really loved him.”
He grew up with her, Herta explained, living in the same
apartment after Malke returned to Lemberg in 1919. He
was there when she was born in 1920, sixteen years old, a
Viennese schoolboy. Her mother, Gusta, was his guardian in
Malke’s absence.
Over the years, Leon was a constant in her life. When
Malke returned from Lemberg, she moved into an
apartment in the same building, owned by Gusta and Max
(later I found the papers that showed the building was sold
by Max and Gusta for a pittance to a local Nazi, a few
months after the Anschluss). Malke was reassuring, a
matronly
presence
throughout
Herta’s
childhood,
especially during the large family gatherings on religious
holidays. As far as Herta can recall, there was almost no
religion in the family life; they rarely went to synagogue.
“I think Leon loved his mother very much,” Herta said
suddenly, without prompting. “He was very attentive to
her,” and she to him, her only son after the death of Emil,
killed in the first days of World War I. There was no father
around, Herta reminded me. As we went through the photo
albums, her face visibly softened each time she came
across an image of Leon.
She recognized the face of another young man, who
appeared in several photographs. The name escaped her.
Max Kupferman, I told her, Leon’s best friend.
“Yes, of course,” Herta said. “I remember him, he was my
uncle’s friend, they were always together. When he came
over, he always came with his friend Max.”
Leon (left) and “Mackie,” 1936
This prompted a question from me about women friends.
Herta shook her head firmly, then smiled, a warm smile.
Her eyes were expressive too. “Everyone was always saying
to Leon, ‘When will you get married?’ He always said he
never wanted to get married.”
I asked again about girlfriends. She remembered none.
“He was always with his friend Max.” That is all she said,
repeating the words.
Doron asked if she thought Leon might have been gay.
“We didn’t know what that was back then,” Herta replied.
The tone was flat. She was not surprised or shocked. She
didn’t confirm; she didn’t deny.
134
BACK IN LONDON, I returned to Leon’s papers, gathering up
all the photographs I was able to find, which were in no
apparent order. I put to one side all the images of Max,
arranging them in chronological order as best I could.
The first photograph was a formal portrait, taken by the
Central Atelier in Vienna in November 1924. On the back of
the little square image, Max wrote an inscription (“To my
friend Buchholz, with memories”). The last image of Max in
Leon’s album was taken twelve years later, in May 1936,
the two men lying on a grass field, with a leather football.
Max signed it “Mackie.”
Between 1924 and 1936, over a period of twelve years,
Leon had several dozen photographs of his friend Max. Not
a year passed without a photograph, it seemed, and often
there were several.
The two men on a walking holiday. Playing football. At a
function. A beach party, with girls, arms entwined. By a car
in the countryside, standing together.
Over a dozen years, from the age of twenty until just a
few months before he married Rita, when he was thirtythree, the photographs signaled a close relationship.
Whether it was intimate in another way was unclear. To
view them now, with Herta’s recollections in my mind,
pointed to a particular kind of intimacy. He said he never
wanted to get married.
Max managed to get out of Vienna, although when or how
I did not know. He went to America, to New York, then to
California. He stayed in touch with Leon, and many years
later, when my mother was in Los Angeles, she met him. He
married late in life, my mother told me, no children. What
was he like? Warm, friendly, funny, she said. “And
flamboyant.” She smiled, a knowing smile.
I went back to the only letter from Max that I found in
Leon’s papers. It was written in May 1945, on the ninth,
the day Germany capitulated to the Soviet Union. It was a
reply to a letter sent by Leon from Paris a month earlier.
Max described the loss of family members, the sense of
survival, the renewed sense of optimism. The words
conveyed a palpable sense of hope. Like Leon, he embraced
life, a cup half-full.
The last, typed line caught my eye, as it did when I first
read it, although in a different way back then, without the
context, without having heard Herta. Did Max linger on the
memory of Vienna as he typed out the words, as he offered
“heartfelt kisses,” before closing with a question?
“Should I reciprocate the kisses,” Max wrote, “or are
they only for your wife?”
PART X
Judgment
Credit p10.1
135
AFTER FRANK FINISHED the two days setting out his case, the
remaining defendants set out their defenses, and then the
prosecutors made closing arguments. The Americans chose
not to involve Lemkin in their efforts, but the British turned
to Lauterpacht, who worked with Shawcross. Having
regard to the “tremendous help” he’d given with the
opening, Shawcross asked Lauterpacht to craft the final
legal arguments and apply them to the facts. “I should in
any event be most grateful for your advice.”
Lauterpacht took some time to recover from the first trip
to Nuremberg several months earlier. He did so by
immersing himself in teaching and writing, including one
article that reflected the challenges posed by the trial, the
tension between “realism” and “principle.” “Sound realism”
and a pragmatic approach were both necessary, he
concluded, but in the long run the commitment to
“principle” was more important and should prevail. He
didn’t address Lemkin’s ideas, but if he had, he would have
said they were wrong in principle and impractical.
By the spring of 1946, Lauterpacht felt tired and dismal.
Rachel was concerned about his health and state of mind
and an insomnia that caused him to worry greatly about
life’s minor challenges, such as the cost of membership at
the Athenaeum Club in Pall Mall. The terrible news
delivered by Inka about the deaths of his parents and the
entire family weighed heavily on him, even without any
details. Rachel told Eli that in the privacy of the night his
father would “cry out awfully in his sleep,” a reaction to
“the bestialities he had heard described.”
Inka’s survival did offer one ray of light. Lauterpacht put
time and energy into persuading her to move to England, to
be with them in Cambridge. He had the right to bring her
over, he explained, as her closest living relative, but he
couldn’t bring the Melmans, who were caring for her in a
displaced persons camp in Austria. Lauterpacht understood
that Inka was inclined to stay with the Melmans, the couple
who offered security and continuity after the “horrible
sufferings” she had lived through. “We know about you a
lot,” he wrote to the fifteen-year-old, “because your
Grandfather Aron loved you very much and was very often
speaking about you.” He wanted to respect her wishes, up
to a point. It was for her to decide on her future, he wrote,
yet she should come to England, where conditions of life
would be “more normal.”
Rachel intervened to end the impasse. I understand your
“fears and doubts,” she told Inka, but Hersch is your
closest relative, your mother’s brother. “I met your mother
and I loved her very much,” Rachel wrote. “I think it is
right that you come to us as your own home and to your
own family.” She added a line that must have influenced
Inka: “You will be our own child, our daughter.” Later that
year, Inka traveled to England to move in with them in
Cranmer Road.
During this correspondence with Inka, Lauterpacht
returned to Nuremberg, now armed with the knowledge
that his family had been destroyed by the men he was
prosecuting. He traveled on May 29 to confer with David
Maxwell Fyfe and the British legal team charged with
preparing closing arguments. They would be delivered a
few weeks later, at the end of July, so Shawcross proposed a
division of labors: the British lawyers in Nuremberg would
deal with the facts about the individual defendants, and
Lauterpacht would address the “legal and historical part of
the case.” His task would be to persuade the judges that
there were no obstacles to finding the defendants guilty of
crimes against humanity or any of the other crimes. Your
part will be “the main feature of the speech,” Shawcross
explained.
136
LEMKIN REMAINED FRUSTRATED in Washington, D.C., purposely
kept away from the action, an outsider. Only now did he try
once more to find a way to get back to Europe, as
“genocide” fell out of the trial, his word unspoken. He
believed that only he could bring genocide back into the
case, and for that he needed to be in Nuremberg.
Working part-time as an adviser in the U.S. War
Department (on a daily fee of twenty-five dollars), he lived
alone, worried about the fate of his family—still no news—
and followed the trial through the news reports and
transcripts. He had access to some of the evidence and was
attentive to the details set out in Frank’s diaries. They were
“minute records,” he wrote, offering an account of “every
‘official’ word uttered or deed performed.” Sometimes they
read “like a bad Hollywood script,” the words of a coldblooded, cynical, arrogant man with no pity in his heart or
any sense of the immensity of his crimes. The diaries
brought Frank into his sights.
—
Yet life was not all work and worry. Lemkin socialized—
more actively than Lauterpacht—and became something of
a man-about-town. So much so, in fact, that The
Washington Post included him in a feature about the
capital’s “foreign-born” men and their views on American
women. Among the seven who agreed to participate, Dr.
Rafael Lemkin was identified as a “scholar,” the “seriousminded” Polish international lawyer who wrote Axis Rule.
Lemkin didn’t forgo the chance to share his views about
American women. A confirmed bachelor, he found the
ladies of Washington, D.C., to be “too frank, too honest” to
allure themselves to him, lacking what he thought of as the
“tempting, subtle qualities of the European coquette.” Yes,
in America “practically all women” were “attractive”
because beauty was “so democratized.” European women
were, by contrast, usually “shapeless and often ugly,” which
meant one had to visit the “upper strata of society” to find
real beauties. There was another difference: unlike
Americans, European women used their intellect to
captivate men, to play “the role of intellectual ‘geisha
girls.’ ” Still, he told the interviewer, whatever the faults of
American women he would happily “settle for one.”
He never did. When I raised matters of the heart with
Nancy Ackerly, the “Druid princess” Lemkin met in New
York’s Riverside Park, she recalled him telling her that he
had “no time for married life, or the funds to support it.” A
few weeks later, the post delivered a few pages of Lemkin’s
poetry, thirty poems that Lemkin wrote and shared with
Nancy. Most focused on the events that touched on his
life’s work and did so in fortunate obscurity, yet a number
dealt with matters of the heart. None were obviously
addressed to a woman, but two appeared to be addressed
to men. In “Frightened Love,” he wrote,
Will he love me more
If I lock the door
When he knocks tonight?
Another, which was untitled, opened with the following
lines:
Sir, don’t fight
Let my kiss quite
Your breast with love.
Quite what these words referred to is a matter of
speculation. Yet it was clear that Lemkin experienced a
solitary, lonely existence, and there were few people
around with whom he could share the frustration at the
progress of the trial. Perhaps he was fortified by hope in
the spring of 1946, when national criminal trials opened in
Poland under the guidance of his old mentor Emil
Rappaport, cases in which the German defendants would
be charged with genocide. At Nuremberg, however, the
word simply disappeared, and after the early salvo of the
opening days, 130 days of hearings passed with not one
mention of genocide.
So in May he began a new campaign of intensive letter
writing, to influence key individuals who might help change
the direction of the trial. The letters I found were wordy
and rather desperate, infused with a naive, almost fawning
quality. There was nevertheless something endearing about
them, a vulnerable but genuine tone. A three-page letter
went to Eleanor Roosevelt, chair of a new United Nations
committee on human rights, whom Lemkin identified as
sympathetic because she understood “the needs of underprivileged groups.” He thanked Mrs. Roosevelt for taking
up his ideas with her husband—“our great war leader,” he
called Roosevelt—and informed her that Justice Jackson
had accepted “my idea of formulating genocide as a crime,”
a claim that was only partly accurate. The law was “not the
answer to all the world’s troubles,” he recognized, but it
offered a means to develop key principles. Would she help
to create a new machinery to prevent and punish genocide?
He enclosed a few articles he’d written.
A similar letter went to Anne O’Hare McCormick of the
New York Times editorial board, and another to the newly
elected secretary-general of the United Nations, Trygve
Lie, a Norwegian lawyer. More letters went to those with
whom he found a point of connection, however tenuous:
Gifford Pinchot, for example, a former governor of
Pennsylvania whom he had met years earlier through the
Littells but with whom he lost touch (“I missed both of you
very much,” Lemkin wrote). The head of international
organizations at the State Department got a letter that
included an apology (“a sudden call to Nuremberg and
Berlin” had intervened to prevent continued conversation).
Lemkin, the consummate networker, was laying the
foundations for a renewed campaign.
Credit 136.1
Lemkin’s War Department ID card, May 1946
The “sudden call” to Nuremberg was unexplained. He left
for Europe at the end of May, armed with an identity card
freshly minted by the War Department, one that might open
doors in Germany even if it was stamped with the words
“Not a Pass.”
The photograph presents Lemkin as an official man, in
white shirt and tie, first seen in the Washington Post article
published two months earlier. Lemkin stares intently into
the camera, lips pursed, brows furrowed, purposeful,
distracted. The pass recorded him as having blue eyes and
“black/gray” hair, weighing 176 pounds, and standing
exactly five feet nine and a half inches tall.
137
LEMKIN’S FIRST STOP was London. There he met Egon
Schwelb, head of the United Nations War Crimes
Commission, a sympathetic Czechoslovak lawyer who
represented anti-Nazi German refugees in Prague before
the war and who was in parallel contact with Lauterpacht.
They talked of genocide and accountability, and Lemkin
floated the idea of producing a film to track down missing
war criminals. Nothing came of it. From London, he made
his way to Germany and Nuremberg, where he arrived in
early June, missing Lauterpacht by a few hours. Fritz
Sauckel was in the dock that day, responding to charges of
criminal responsibility for forced labor in Germany, telling
the judges of his meeting with Frank in Kraków, just after
Frank returned from Lemberg in August 1942. Frank had
told Sauckel that he’d already sent 800,000 Polish workers
to the Reich, but he could easily find him another 140,000.
People were treated as cheap commodities.
On Sunday, June 2, Lemkin was offered a meeting with
Robert Jackson to explain the purpose of his European trip,
which was to assist the War Department in assessing the
impact of releasing SS men from detention camps. More
than twenty-five thousand SS men had already been
released, Lemkin told Jackson. The prosecutor, who was
accompanied by his son, Bill, expressed surprise, because
the SS was being prosecuted as a criminal organization.
The three men also talked of Lemkin’s work on the Tokyo
trials, and it would have been surprising if Lemkin didn’t
weave the word “genocide” into the conversation. Not
formally a member of Jackson’s team, Lemkin described his
role as “Legal Advisor” to Jackson, a modest embellishment
of the reality. He was given a pass allowing him access to
the officers’ mess in Nuremberg, with the dining privileges
of a colonel. I found no formal pass to the courtroom, and
no one could point me to a photograph of him in courtroom
600. Despite many hours spent at the archives of Getty
Images, I too found nothing.
Yet it was apparent that he was present in the Palace of
Justice, because he spent time chasing prosecution lawyers
and also—a greater surprise—talking to defense lawyers.
Benjamin Ferencz, a junior lawyer on Jackson’s team,
described Lemkin as a disheveled and disoriented figure,
constantly trying to catch the attention of prosecutors. “We
were all extremely busy,” Ferencz recalled, not wanting to
be bothered with genocide, a subject that was “not
something we had time to think about.” The prosecution
lawyers wanted to be left alone to “convict these guys of
mass murder.”
One prosecutor who was more helpful to him was Dr.
Robert Kempner, whom he’d given a copy of his book a year
earlier, in June 1945. Dismissed by Hermann Göring from
his position as a lawyer in Germany and then banished
from the Reich, Kempner was now an important player on
Jackson’s team: remarkably, he turned the tables and was
prosecuting Göring. Kempner allowed Lemkin to use his
office, room 128 at the Palace of Justice, as a poste
restante, and a place from which Lemkin could plot the
revival of his campaign.
Three days after meeting the Jacksons, Lemkin wrote a
lengthy memorandum to plead the case for genocide. It
wasn’t clear whether the memo was written in response to
a request from the American prosecutor, although I
doubted it. The paper—titled “The Necessity to Develop the
Concept of Genocide in the Proceedings”—was sent to
Kempner on June 5. It made the point at some length that
“genocide” was the proper term to describe the
defendants’ intent to destroy nations and racial and
religious groups. Lesser terms—like “mass murder” or
“mass extermination”—were inadequate, because they
were incapable of conveying the vital element of racial
motivation and the desire to destroy entire cultures. How
impoverished we would be, Lemkin wrote,
if the people doomed by Germany such as the Jews had not been
permitted to create the Bible or to give birth to an Einstein [or] a
Spinoza; if the Poles had not had the opportunity to give the world
a Copernicus, a Chopin, a Curie; the Greeks a Plato and a
Socrates, the English a Shakespeare; the Russians a Tolstoy and a
Shostakovich, the Americans an Emerson and a Jefferson, the
Frenchm[e]n a Renan and a Rodin.
He also made clear that he was concerned with the
destruction of any group, not just Jews. He singled out
Poles, gypsies, Slovenes, and Russians. To stress “only the
Jewish aspect” was something to be avoided, because it
would offer an invitation to Göring and other defendants
“to use the court for anti-Semitic propaganda.” The charge
of genocide had to be part of a broader trial strategy, to
show the defendants as enemies of mankind, a “specially
dangerous crime,” one that went beyond crimes against
humanity.
Lemkin sent a revised version of the memo to Thomas
Dodd, the American lawyer prosecuting Frank. To this
version, he added new material, tailoring the document to
the needs of the recipient, including a couple of
Czechoslovak names (Buss and Dvorak) on the list of those
whom the Germans had sought to destroy. He also wrote a
new section, to make the point that the “German people”
were a “Kain who killed Abel” who had to be made to
understand that the Nazis destroyed individuals not by way
of sporadic criminality but for another intentional purpose,
“the killing of brotherly nations.” Lemkin ended the letter
with a warning: if the charge of genocide was left out of the
judgment, it would leave the impression “that the
prosecution did not prove its case.” I found no evidence
that the letter influenced Dodd, one way or another.
Lemkin met again with Jackson at the end of June, this
time to persuade him to argue for genocide as a distinct
crime. He faced political objections in the United States
and in Britain, arising respectively from historic American
treatment of blacks and British colonial practices. There
were practical difficulties evoked by Lauterpacht: How did
one actually prove the intent to destroy a group? And there
were objections of principle, of the kind evoked by Leopold
Kohr, that Lemkin had fallen into the trap of “biological
thinking,” focusing on groups in a manner that gave rise to
anti-Semitism and anti-Germanism. The hurdles remained
high.
138
DESPITE THESE OBSTACLES, Lemkin’s efforts did have some
success. Within four days of the second meeting with
Jackson, the word “genocide” made its way back into the
proceedings. It happened on June 25, and Lemkin’s
unexpected white knight was Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, the
Scottish cross-examiner of the elegant, distinguished, and
white-haired diplomat Konstantin von Neurath, Hitler’s first
foreign
minister.
A
young
German
diplomat
in
Constantinople during the massacre of the Armenians,
Neurath later became Reichsprotektor for occupied
Bohemia and Moravia, and it was on a note written in that
capacity that Maxwell Fyfe focused. In August 1940,
Neurath had written about the treatment of the Czech
population in the occupied area. One option he aired—
described as the “most radical and theoretically complete
solution”—would be to evacuate all Czechs from the
territory and simply replace them with Germans, assuming
enough Germans could be found. The alternative was to
achieve “Germanization by individual selective breeding” of
some Czechs and the expulsion of others. With either
approach, the aim was to destroy the Czech intelligentsia.
Maxwell Fyfe read out extracts from Neurath’s
memorandum. “Now, Defendant,” he said, speaking in a
clipped tone, did he recognize that he was being charged
“with genocide, which we say is the extermination of racial
and national groups”? Lemkin’s satisfaction must have
been great, and even greater a few moments later when
Maxwell Fyfe referred to “the well-known book of Professor
Lemkin” and then read into the record Lemkin’s definition
of “genocide.” “What you wanted to do,” Maxwell Fyfe told
Neurath, “was to get rid of the teachers and writers and
singers of Czechoslovakia, whom you call the intelligentsia,
the people who would hand down the history and traditions
of the Czech people to other generations.” That was
genocide. Neurath offered no response. Lemkin’s trip to
Nuremberg had made an immediate difference.
Lemkin later wrote to Maxwell Fyfe, with an elated tone,
to express his “very warm appreciation” for the British
prosecutor’s support for the charge of genocide. Maxwell
Fyfe’s response, if there was one, has been lost. After the
trial, the prosecutor did write a foreword to the Times
journalist R. W. Cooper’s fine account of the proceedings,
invoking genocide and Lemkin’s book. The crime of
genocide was “essential” to the Nazi plan, he wrote, and
led to “terrible” actions. Cooper devoted a full chapter to
the “new crime” of “genocide,” a term whose “apostle” was
Lemkin, a man with “a voice crying in the wilderness.”
Cooper noted that the opponents of the term “genocide”
knew it could be applied to “the extinction of the Red
Indians in North America,” recognition that Lemkin’s ideas
offered “an imperative warning to the white race.”
The journalist mentioned Haushofer, “barbarity,”
“vandalism,” and the Madrid conference from which
Lemkin “was recalled to Poland” (which suggested that
Lemkin continued to embellish, as he had done at Duke
four years earlier). It was clear that the Polish lawyer used
Cooper to obtain access to Maxwell Fyfe, and this was the
likely path by which the word “genocide” returned to the
courtroom.
Because Shawcross and Lauterpacht weren’t in
Nuremberg at the time, Maxwell Fyfe was free to act alone
in running with the genocide argument. The consequence
was potentially significant: unlike the concept of crimes
against humanity, which was concerned with responsibility
for acts connected to war, the charge of genocide opened
the door to all acts, including those that occurred before
the war began.
139
AS LEMKIN HARRIED and lobbied and persisted, Lauterpacht
wrote parts of Shawcross’s closing speech. He worked
alone on the first floor of 6 Cranmer Road, without pressing
the flesh of journalists in the bar of Nuremberg’s Grand
Hotel. I imagine Bach’s St. Matthew Passion playing in the
background, as the ideas flowed and he put pen to paper.
Occasionally he might look out of the window, looking over
to the university library and the football field.
Lauterpacht worked on the draft for several weeks. He
completed a short introduction and lengthier first and third
parts of the attorney general’s speech, setting out legal
arguments (the second part, on facts and evidence, was
being written in Nuremberg). I had the typewritten version
of Lauterpacht’s text but was curious to see the
handwritten original, the one Lauterpacht gave Mrs. Lyons
to type up. Eli had it in Cambridge, so I returned once more
to take a look. The handwriting was familiar, as were the
arguments, so clearly and logically set out, inviting the
tribunal to reject the argument of the defendants that the
charges were novel or unprecedented. The opening pages
were understated; the emotion and passion had been
stripped out. As in so many ways, Lauterpacht was the very
opposite of Lemkin.
Yet this draft would have a different conclusion from the
one he wrote for the opening of the trial, a finale that was
raw, gripping, and impassioned. That’s not how it began, a
nine-page introduction on the purpose of the trial and the
need for fairness. The trial wasn’t about revenge,
Lauterpacht wrote, but about delivering justice according
to law, an “authoritative, thorough and impartial
ascertainment” of the crimes. The tribunal’s task was to
develop the law to protect individuals, to create “a most
valuable precedent for any future International Criminal
Court.” (The observation was prescient, because five long
decades passed before the ICC came into being.)
The second part of Lauterpacht’s draft ran over forty
pages, and wove together many ideas he’d spent years
thinking about. On war crimes, he focused on murder and
prisoners of war, on Polish intellectuals, on Russian
political workers. He went out of his way to assert that the
charge of “crimes against humanity” wasn’t in any way
novel, directly contradicting what he’d told the Foreign
Office just a few months earlier. Rather, it was a starting
point to vindicate “the rights of man,” to offer protection
against the “cruelty and barbarity of his own State.” Such
acts were illegal even if German law allowed them. The
draft proclaimed that the fundamental rights of man
trumped national laws, and it set forth a new approach to
serve the interests of individuals, not states.
In this way, each individual human being was entitled to
protection under the law, a law that could not turn a blind
eye to atrocity. Notably, Lauterpacht made only a passing
mention of Hitler and a solitary reference to the Jews, five
million of whom were murdered “for no other reason than
that they were of Jewish race or faith.” Of the events in
Lemberg, addressed by the Soviets on the opening days of
the trial, he wrote nothing. Lauterpacht stripped out
references to matters that might be seen as personal,
writing nothing of the treatment of the Poles, and of course
he did not use the word “genocide.” He remained
implacably opposed to Lemkin’s ideas.
His focus then turned to the defendants, a “pathetic”
bunch who invoked international law to save themselves.
They sought refuge in outmoded ideas, that somehow the
individual who acted for the state was immune from
criminal liability. Of the twenty-one defendants in the
courtroom, he identified five by name, singling out Julius
Streicher for his race theories and Hermann Göring for
participating in the “butchery” of the Warsaw ghetto.
The only defendant Lauterpacht mentioned repeatedly
was Hans Frank. It was perhaps no coincidence that he was
the man in the dock most closely connected to the murder
of Lauterpacht’s own family. Frank was a “direct agent” of
the “crimes of extermination,” Lauterpacht wrote, even if
he was not personally involved in the act of execution.
—
Lauterpacht put the emphasis on Frank in the last pages of
his draft, the closing bars of a near-symphonic text. The
new Charter of the United Nations offered a step toward
the enthronement of the rights of man. It heralded a new
epoch, one that placed “the rights and duties of the
individual in the very center of the constitutional law of the
world.” This was pure Lauterpacht, the central theme of his
life’s work. But in these pages, he also found a different
voice, releasing a well of pent-up emotion and energy. The
handwriting changed, words were added and crossed out, a
raw anger aimed at defendants who didn’t even offer “a
simple admission of guilt.” Yes, there were “abject
confessions,” perhaps some with an air of sincerity, but
these were false, no more than “artful evasions.”
Then Lauterpacht homed in on the defendant most
closely connected to the fate of his own family, a man who
offered a tentative expression of responsibility in April.
“Witness…defendant Frank,” he wrote, “confessing to a
sense of deepest guilt because of the terrible words which
he had uttered—as if it were his words that mattered and
not the terrible deed which accompanied them. What might
have become a redeeming claim to a vestige of humanity
reveals itself as a crafty device of desperate men. He, like
other defendants, have [sic] pleaded, to the very end, full
ignorance of that vast organized and most intricate
ramification of the foulest crimes that ever sullied the
record of a nation.”
Credit 139.1
“Witness…defendant Frank,” Lauterpacht’s draft, July 10, 1946
This was uncharacteristically emotional. Interesting, Eli
said, when I took him to the passage. He hadn’t
appreciated the significance of the words; “my father never
spoke to me of these matters, not once.” Now, faced with
the document in the context I explained, Eli reflected aloud
on the connection between his father and the defendants.
Nor did he know, until then, that Governor Otto von
Wächter, Frank’s deputy, a man directly involved in the
Lemberg killings, was a classmate of his father’s in Vienna.
A few months later, a chance arose for him to meet Niklas
Frank and Robby Dundas, a reunion of the children of
judge, prosecutor, and defendant. Eli declined.
Lauterpacht fretted that Shawcross wouldn’t use what
he’d written. “I am naturally inclined to think [it] is
relevant and necessary,” he told the attorney general,
reminding him of the need to reach the audience outside
the courtroom. If the speech was overly long, Shawcross
could submit the whole text to the tribunal but only read
out “selected portions.”
On July 10, Lauterpacht’s secretary placed these covering
thoughts and the typewritten draft into a large envelope
and sent it off.
140
AS LAUTERPACHT’S DRAFT made its way by train to London,
Lemkin redoubled his efforts. Help came from an unlikely
source, Alfred Rosenberg. I am no génocidaire, Frank’s
neighbor on the defendants’ front bench told the judges,
speaking through his lawyer. Dr. Alfred Thoma sought to
persuade the tribunal that Rosenberg’s contribution to Nazi
policy was merely a “scientific” exercise, that there was no
connection with “genocide” in the sense evoked by Lemkin.
To the contrary, Rosenberg had been motivated by a
“struggle between psychologies,” the lawyer added,
without desire to kill or destroy. The unexpected argument
was prompted by a line in Lemkin’s book that quoted from
Rosenberg’s magnum opus, Der Mythus des 20.
Jahrhunderts (The myth of the 20th century), published in
1930. The book claimed to offer an intellectual foundation
for racist ideas. Rosenberg was aggrieved that Lemkin had
misused his words, asserting that Lemkin omitted a crucial
sentence from the original work and that Rosenberg had
not argued for one race to extinguish another. The
argument was contorted and hopeless.
Wondering how Lemkin’s ideas reached Rosenberg, I
came across the answer without looking for it, in the
archives of Columbia University. Tucked in among the few
remnants of Lemkin’s papers was a copy of a lengthy
pleading written by Dr. Thoma for Rosenberg. Thoma had
given it to Lemkin with a handwritten note of personal
appreciation. “Ehrerbietig überreicht,” Thoma wrote.
“Presented with all due respect.” The document pointed to
Lemkin’s unstinting efforts, his willingness even to engage
with the defendants through their lawyers. In the days that
followed, other defense lawyers also invoked his ideas, if
only to disagree with them.
Perhaps because he was burdened by the absence of
news on his family, Lemkin’s health took a further turn for
the worse. Three days after Rosenberg’s anti-genocidal
outburst, Lemkin took to a bed, where he remained for six
days under sedation. On July 19, a U.S. military doctor
found he was suffering from acute hypertension, nausea,
and vomiting. Further examination was followed by
admission to a hospital. He spent a few days in the U.S.
Army 385th Station Hospital; another doctor recommended
that he return without delay to America. He ignored the
advice.
141
LEMKIN WAS in Nuremberg on July 11 when Dr. Seidl
presented Frank’s closing arguments in court. Confronted
with Frank’s virtual admission of collective guilt in April,
and the evidence that seeped from his diaries, the lawyer
had a challenging task. It didn’t help that the tribunal was
irritated with Dr. Seidl, who also represented Rudolf Hess.
(Seidl annoyed the judges by not giving them an English
translation of the defense speech he delivered for Hess,
and going on endlessly about the Versailles Treaty being
the cause of the terrible acts for which his clients were
charged.)
Dr. Seidl sought to minimize Frank’s earlier testimony
and the many unhelpful passages in the diaries. “With one
exception,” Seidl told the judges, the diary entries were
merely secretarial transcripts, not words actually dictated
by Frank. No one could know their accuracy because Frank
hadn’t personally checked the entries made by the
stenographers. They were only words, not proof of actions
or facts. Yet Seidl had to concede that Frank’s speeches
tended toward a certain “point of view” on the Jewish
question and made “no secret of his anti-Semitic views,”
which was something of an understatement. The
prosecution had established no “causal connection”
between Frank’s words and the measures perpetrated by
the Security Police, Seidl argued, and the police weren’t
under his client’s control.
Moreover, Dr. Seidl continued, the record showed that
Frank had objected to the worst excesses. Terrible crimes
were committed on the territory of the General
Government, not least in the concentration camps. Frank
denied none of this, but he wasn’t responsible. To the
contrary, he’d waged a “5 year struggle against all violent
measures,” complaining to the führer but without success.
Seidl tendered numerous documents in support.
Frank sat quietly through these optimistic arguments
without showing any expression. Occasionally, he was seen
to wiggle, and some observed his head to have been a little
more bowed than earlier in the trial. Frank couldn’t
investigate the rumors about Auschwitz, Dr. Seidl
continued, because the camp was outside his territory. As
to Treblinka, which was on his territory, the lawyer adopted
a different line of argument. Could the mere construction
and administration of a concentration camp on Frank’s
territory amount to a crime against humanity? “No,” Dr.
Seidl retorted. As an occupying power, Germany was
entitled to take “necessary steps” to maintain public order
and security. Treblinka was one such step, and not one for
which Frank was responsible. Dr. Seidl had nothing to say
about the testimony of Samuel Rajzman.
This approach prompted an intervention from the
prosecutor Robert Kempner, visibly irritated. Seidl’s
arguments were “completely irrelevant,” he told the
judges, and made without any supporting evidence. Lord
Justice Lawrence accepted the point, but Dr. Seidl simply
continued in the same vein.
The judges sat impassively. Three months earlier, in April,
Frank had spoken words that appeared to reflect some
degree of collective responsibility, if not personal or
individual responsibility. Now his lawyer was adopting a
different tack. The other defendants had got to him,
impressing upon him the need for solidarity with the group.
142
THE DEFENSE LAWYERS completed their arguments at the end
of July. All that remained for each of the twenty-one
defendants was to present a short, closing personal
statement. Before that, the prosecution would speak.
The four prosecution teams took the floor in the same
order as the opening statements. The Americans first,
focusing on count one and the conspiracy claim. Then the
British, on crimes against peace in count two, together with
an overview of the legal aspects of the case as a whole,
prepared by Lauterpacht. Then the French and the
Russians, on war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Robert Jackson opened for the prosecution on a Friday
morning, July 26. Lemkin was still in Nuremberg, eager to
hear what might be said about genocide; Lauterpacht
stayed in Cambridge. Jackson took the tribunal back to the
facts, the war, its conduct, and the enslavement of occupied
populations. The “most far-flung and terrible” of the acts
was the persecution and extermination of Jews, a “final
solution” that led to the killing of six million. The
defendants offered a “chorus,” claiming to be oblivious to
the terrible facts. A “ridiculous” argument, Jackson told the
judges. Göring said he “knew nothing” of any excesses, not
suspecting an extermination program despite having
signed a “score of decrees.” Hess was merely an “innocent
middleman,” transmitting Hitler’s orders without reading
them. Neurath? A foreign minister “who knew little of
foreign affairs and nothing of foreign policy.” Rosenberg? A
party philosopher with “no idea of the violence” that his
philosophy incited.
And Frank? A governor-general in Poland who “reigned
but did not rule.” Among the upper echelons of
government, he was “fanatical,” a lawyer who solidified
Nazi power, brought lawlessness to Poland, and reduced
the population to “sorrowing remnants.” Remember
Frank’s words, Jackson told the judges, that “a thousand
years will pass and this guilt of Germany will still not be
erased.”
Jackson spoke for half a day. It was powerful, incisive,
and elegant, but the speech had one big hole at its heart, at
least from Lemkin’s perspective: Jackson said nothing of
genocide. Lemkin recognized the danger: if the chief
prosecutor wasn’t on board, there was little prospect that
the American judges on the tribunal, Biddle and Parker,
would be. This made the British even more important, yet
Lemkin couldn’t know that the draft Lauterpacht had
already written for Shawcross made no mention of
genocide.
143
SHAWCROSS WALKED to the lectern after lunch and spoke
through the afternoon and into the next day. He addressed
the facts, “crimes against peace,” and the sanctity of the
individual.
As Shawcross prepared to speak, Lauterpacht knew his
draft would have been drastically edited by the British
lawyers in Nuremberg, who were worried about the
direction the trial was taking. “We are very apprehensive
over the way the Judges are talking about conviction and
sentence,” Colonel Harry Phillimore had told Shawcross.
“Informally at dinner, etc., they have indicated that they
may acquit two or three and that quite a number may not
get the death sentence.” Shawcross was deeply concerned.
We can imagine “one or two escaping the death penalty,”
Phillimore added, “but the acquittal of any of the accused,
and any low sentences for some of the others, would reduce
the trial to a farce.”
Shawcross had told Lauterpacht that his lengthy draft
presented “some considerable difficulty.” To address the
difficulties, and also by way of self-protection, the attorney
general would devote more time to the facts, which meant
cutting back on Lauterpacht’s legal arguments. “If I fail to
be guided by Fyfe’s advice and anything went wrong, it
would obviously be said that it was my fault.” And he was
not prepared to submit in written form a longer speech, for
the record, but read out only parts of it. He would use what
he could from Lauterpacht’s draft. In the end, threequarters of Shawcross’s seventy-seven-page text was
devoted to the facts and supporting evidence. That left
sixteen pages for legal arguments, of which twelve were
fully written by Lauterpacht. There was cutting but, as
Lauterpacht was soon to discover, also some addition.
Shawcross started with a chronology, from the prewar
period of the defendants’ conspiracy to commit crimes
through to the war. He traced events across Europe,
following along the trail of decrees and papers gathered by
Lemkin, beginning in the Rhineland and Czechoslovakia,
working his way through Poland, then westward to Holland,
Belgium, and France, up north to Norway and Denmark,
southeast through Yugoslavia and Greece, and finally east
into Soviet Russia. The war crimes he laid out were both
“the object and the parent of the other crimes,” Shawcross
told the judges. Crimes against humanity were committed,
but only in the course of the war. He made the connection
that Lemkin most feared, but he was silent about all the
crimes committed before 1939.
Yet this speech also offered a single, brilliant, defining
moment of courtroom advocacy. Shawcross took the judges
to a single act of killing, one that allowed ten years of
horror to be reflected in one powerful moment. He read out
the witness statement prepared by Hermann Graebe, the
German manager of a factory near Dubno on Frank’s
territory, which was close to the home of the baker where
Lemkin had taken refuge for a few days in September
1939. Shawcross adopted a timbre that squeezed all
emotion out of the words, speaking slowly and articulating
each word with crystalline precision:
Without screaming or weeping these people undressed, stood
around in family groups, kissed each other, said farewells, and
waited for a sign from another SS man, who stood near the pit,
also with a whip in his hand.
A silence descended over the courtroom as time slowed
and the words worked their effect. As Shawcross spoke, the
writer Rebecca West, who sat in the press gallery, noticed
Frank wriggling in his seat, like a small child being berated
by a schoolmaster.
During the 15 minutes that I stood near I heard no complaint or
plea for mercy. I watched a family of about eight persons, a man
and a woman both about 50 with their children of about 1, 8, and
10, and two grown-up daughters of about 20 to 24. An old woman
with snow-white hair was holding the one-year-old child in her
arms and singing to it and tickling it. The child was cooing with
delight. The couple were looking on with tears in their eyes. The
father was holding the hand of a boy about 10 years old and
speaking to him softly; the boy was fighting his tears.
Shawcross paused to look around the courtroom, toward
the defendants. Did he notice Frank, head down, looking
towards the courtroom’s wooden floor?
“The father pointed to the sky, stroked his head, and
seemed to explain something to him.”
A moment of “living pity,” as Rebecca West described it.
144
SHAWCROSS TURNED his attention to Frank. These acts
occurred on his territory, a fact sufficient to convict him,
then he pressed deeper.
Hans Frank, the minister of justice for Bavaria, who’d
received reports on murders in Dachau as early as 1933.
Hans Frank, the leading jurist of the Nazi Party, a
member of the Central Committee that ordered the boycott
of the Jews.
Hans Frank, a minister who took to the airwaves in
March 1934 to justify racial legislation.
Hans Frank, a defendant who asked the judges to believe
that the words in his diaries were written in ignorance of
the facts.
“That damn Englishman,” Frank said of Shawcross, a
curse that was loud enough to be heard across the
courtroom.
Hans Frank, a lawyer who spoke and wrote in support of
a “horrible policy of genocide.”
The word came out of the blue, not written into the text
drafted by Lauterpacht. Shawcross must have added it, and
then he repeated it. “Genocide” as a broad aim. “Genocide”
applied to gypsies, to Polish intelligentsia, to Jews.
“Genocide” pursued “in different forms” against other
groups, in Yugoslavia, in Alsace-Lorraine, in the Low
Countries, even in Norway.
Shawcross was on a roll, turning to the techniques of
genocide. He described the pattern of action that ended
with the deliberate murder of groups, in gas chambers, by
mass shootings, by working the victims to death. He spoke
of “biological devices” to decrease the birthrate, of
sterilization, of castration, of abortion, of the separation of
man and woman. The evidence was overwhelming, he
continued. Each defendant knew about the “policy of
genocide,” each was guilty of the crime, each was a
murderer. The only proper sentence was “the supreme
penalty.” This caused a commotion in the dock.
Shawcross used Lemkin’s word but held back from
embracing the fullness of its meaning. Lemkin wanted to
criminalize all group killings, from 1933 onward, before the
war began. Shawcross used the term in a more limited
sense, as he made clear. “Genocide” was an aggravated
“crime against humanity,” but only if committed in
connection with the war. The restriction was imposed by
Article 6(c) of the charter, by the infamous comma
introduced into the text in August 1945. For an act to be a
crime, it had to be connected to the war. This was “a very
important qualification,” Shawcross told the judges, and
took away with one hand what he had given with the other,
the full expression of the concept of genocide. Reading his
words, I understood the consequence, the carving out from
the trial of all the acts that occurred in Germany and
Austria
before
September
1939.
The
acts
of
impoverishment and banishment taken against individuals
like Leon, in November 1938, and against millions of others
—of confiscation, expulsion, detention, killing—would be
outside the jurisdiction of the tribunal.
Nevertheless, Shawcross drew much from Lauterpacht.
There was no question of retroactivity, because all the acts
involved—extermination, enslavement, persecution—were
crimes under most national laws. The fact that they were
lawful under German law offered no defense because the
acts affected the international community. They were
“crimes against the law of nations,” not mere matters of
domestic concern. In the past, international law had
allowed each state to decide how it would treat its
nationals, but that was now replaced by a new approach:
International law has in the past made some claim that there is a
limit to the omnipotence of the state and that the individual human
being, the ultimate unit of all law, is not disentitled to the
protection of mankind when the state tramples upon his rights in a
manner which outrages the conscience of mankind.
War was just and lawful to prevent “atrocities committed
by tyrants against their subjects.” If humanitarian
intervention by war was allowed under international law,
how could it be said that “intervention by judicial process”
was illegal? Shawcross found his stride. He rejected the
argument of the defendants that “only the state and not the
individual” could commit a crime under international law.
There was no such principle of international law, so those
who helped a state commit a crime against humanity would
not be immune from responsibility; they couldn’t shelter
behind the state. “The individual must transcend the state.”
This took the essence of Lauterpacht’s ideas, with a
passing nod to Lemkin’s ideas on genocide and groups. Yet
Shawcross ended exactly where Lauterpacht had wanted
him to be, in a place that emphasized the individual as the
“ultimate unit of all law.” He had departed from
Lauterpacht on genocide, and I noticed another change:
Shawcross had removed all the references to Frank that
Lauterpacht entered into the last pages of his draft. No
doubt they were too personal and too passionate.
145
SHAWCROSS WAS FOLLOWED by the elderly, frail French chief
prosecutor, Auguste Champetier de Ribes, who managed a
brief introduction before handing over to his deputy. The
tone of Charles Dubost’s arguments was less harsh, but the
French were still clear that the defendants were criminally
culpable; they were accomplices in Germany’s actions.
Frank’s words were once more thrown back at him: He had
admitted, had he not, that the responsibility of those in
government was heavier than that of those who carried out
the orders?
The French joined with Shawcross in seeking a conviction
for genocide. The exterminations that occurred were
“scientific and systematic,” millions killed simply because
they happened to be members of a national or religious
group, men and women who stood in the way of the
“hegemony of the Germanic race.” Genocide was “almost
totally achieved,” in the camps and elsewhere, at the
instance of the Gestapo, with the support of the
defendants, one way or another.
The French prosecutor rejected Dr. Seidl’s argument that
individuals who acted for the state could not be liable for
its wrongs. “Not one of the defendants was an ‘isolated
individual,’ ” Dubost told the judges. Each demonstrated
cooperation and solidarity in the actions. “Hit hard, without
pity,” he implored, hit Frank and all the others who were
content to decree the terrible acts. They are guilty, convict
them, sentence them to hang.
The Soviets followed, as though part of a coordinated
assault. General Roman Rudenko, as stocky and tough in
argument as in physique, turned on the individual
defendants. He had no time for nuance, intricate theory, or
irony. He denounced the Germans for the invasion of
Poland, without a hint of irony as to the parallel Soviet
operation from the east. He dissected Frank’s brutal rule,
reminding the tribunal about Lvov and the events of August
1942. He’d found more evidence, a new Soviet report on
crimes in the city of Lvov, the testimony of Ida Vasseau, a
Frenchwoman who worked in a children’s home. Vasseau
described young children being used as target practice, a
“terror” that continued until the very last day of the
German occupation in July 1944. The aim was complete
annihilation, nothing less.
Credit 145.1
Portrait of Otto von Wächter (main), with image of Arthur SeyssInquart, Schloss Hagenberg, December 2012
“How vain,” Rudenko told the judges, to seek to deprive
us “of the right to punish those who made enslavement and
genocide their aim.” He brought them back to Frank’s
diaries, to the gleeful accounts of the manner in which the
territory would be emptied of Jews! Frank knew about the
camps; he should face the “supreme penalty.” Frank had
been wrong in 1940 to tell Seyss-Inquart that the memory
of his work in Poland would “live forever.” There was no
positive legacy, none.
I remembered an image of Otto von Wächter that his son
Horst had placed alongside a photograph of Seyss-Inquart,
tucked into the frame. “Seyss-Inquart was my godfather,”
Horst once told me. “My middle name is Arthur.”
146
AROUND THE TIME I first read Rudenko’s speech, with its
focus on events in Lvov, a small package arrived from
Warsaw. It contained the photocopied pages of a slim and
long-forgotten volume written by Gerszon Taffet, a
schoolteacher who lived in Żółkiew. It was published in July
1946, as Rudenko was addressing the tribunal.
Taffet wrote vividly of the town’s history, of the
destruction of its Jewish inhabitants, of the catastrophic
events of March 25, 1943, described to me by Clara
Kramer. On that day, Taffet wrote, thirty-five hundred
residents of the ghetto were marched along the town’s
east-west street to the borek, the small wood where
Lauterpacht and Leon once played. The occupiers left that
street lined with corpses and hats, sheets of paper and
photographs. Taffet offered a firsthand account of the acts
of execution:
Once they were stripped naked and thoroughly searched
(especially the women), they were lined up above the open graves.
One by one, they had to step onto the plank which hung over the
ditch, so that when they were shot they fell straight into the open
grave…After the operation the graves were covered up…for
several days after the operation the earth covering the graves
moved; it seemed to ripple.
—
Some chose to refuse other options:
The conduct of Symcha Turk, a respected citizen of Żółkiew, can
be cited as an example of the commitment of a father and
husband. The Germans told him that he, as a professional, can be
saved if he abandons his family. In response, he ostentatiously took
his wife’s arm on one side and his child’s on the other and thus
united they walked to their deaths with their heads held high.
Taffet described the destruction of an entire group,
descended from the inhabitants of Żółkiew dating back to
the sixteenth century. Of the five thousand Jews in Żółkiew
in 1941, he wrote, only “about seventy people survived.”
He offered a list of survivors, which included Clara Kramer,
Mr. and Mrs. Melman, Gedalo Lauterpacht. Mr. Patrontasch
was on the list too, the schoolmate who went to Nuremberg
to find Lauterpacht for Inka. I learned that Mr. Patrontasch,
the whisperer, was called Artur. The names on the list
didn’t include Leibus Flaschner, Leon’s uncle, or any of the
other fifty or more Flaschners in town.
Taffet found the means to offer hope for the future. He
singled out for mention two notable contemporaries of
Żółkiew. One was murdered in Lemberg in the grosse
Aktion of August 1942. The other was “Dr. Henryk
Lauterpacht, a renowned expert in international law,
presently a professor at Cambridge University.”
147
THE NUREMBERG PROSECUTORS brought their final submissions
to a close with a call for the death penalty to be imposed on
all the defendants. What remained for the judges was a
month of arguments on largely technical issues relating to
the criminality of various organizations of the Third Reich.
Importantly, this invoked the collective responsibility of the
SS, the Gestapo, and the cabinet, but more controversial
still was the inclusion of the General Staff and the High
Command of the German armed forces. Each defendant
would then make a brief closing statement, the hearings
would adjourn, and the judges would retire to deliberate.
Judgment was expected at the end of September.
The rift between Lauterpacht and Lemkin was now wide.
Lauterpacht’s ideas on crimes against humanity and the
rights of the individual were firmly entrenched in the
proceedings, coloring the entire case. There seemed to be a
growing support for the idea that the tribunal’s jurisdiction
would be limited to wartime acts, excluding the Nuremberg
laws, murders committed after January 1933, and
Kristallnacht.
Lemkin was distressed by this prospect. He still hoped
that the tide might be turned, that genocide arguments
would obtain traction so the tribunal could judge the earlier
acts. He had some grounds for optimism: after months of
silence, the charge of genocide had made it back into the
hearings, thanks to David Maxwell Fyfe, who brushed aside
the skeptics, Lauterpacht included. The holdouts were the
Americans, yet even here there seemed to be an opening,
as I discovered in the archives of Columbia University.
Among Lemkin’s papers, I found a press release from
Jackson’s office on July 27, issued a day after he addressed
the tribunal but making no mention of genocide. The
document, with the title “Special Release No. 1,” noted that
the British had referred to “genocide” in questioning
Neurath, that the term had been invoked by Shawcross
(“several times”), and that it would “be employed in the
French and Russian presentations.”
The press release stated that if the tribunal convicted the
defendants for genocide, a precedent would be set “for
protecting such groups of people internationally—even if
the crime is committed by a government against its own
citizens.” Someone in the American delegation supported
Lemkin. He kept a copy of the document, which
encouraged him to press on.
The opportunity to pursue his case came unexpectedly at
an international conference to be held in August in
Cambridge, England. Lemkin was given to understand that
his efforts for the genocide case would be strengthened if
he persuaded the conference to adopt a resolution
expressing support for his ideas.
148
THE INTERNATIONAL LAW ASSOCIATION is a venerable institution.
Founded in 1873, it is based in London but with roots in
America. Its regular conferences had been suspended after
1938, resuming seven years later with the Forty-First
Conference, which opened in Cambridge on August 19,
1946. Three hundred international lawyers descended on
the city from across the whole of Europe, except Germany,
from which no participants were listed.
Those present offered a roll call of the great and the
good, including many names I had come across on the road
that started in Lemberg in 1919. Arthur Goodhart was
there, down from the hill that overlooked Lwów. So was
Lauterpacht’s mentor Sir Arnold McNair, and Egon
Schwelb, whom Lemkin met with in London. Sir Hartley
Shawcross was due to attend, but inclement weather
prevented his trip from the west of England. Lauterpacht
was present, his name listed in the alphabetically ordered
official record, five lawyers up from Lemkin (who gave his
address
as
the
“International
Military
Tribunal,
Nuremberg,” without mention of a room number). This was
the first time I could place Lauterpacht and Lemkin in the
same town and building at the same time.
Lemkin’s failing health almost prevented his attendance.
He collapsed after his flight from Nuremberg landed at
Croydon Airport in south London. His dangerously high
blood pressure required immediate attention, but he
ignored advice to rest, hastening up to Cambridge to be
present at the conference opening. He was listed as the
third speaker on the opening day, speaking after
introductory remarks from Lord Porter, a judge and the
chair of the conference. Porter implored the lawyers
present to be “practicable” in their work, to “restrain their
enthusiasms” in dealing with the many challenges ahead.
Unsuccessful advocacy was “apt to antagonize,” he
reminded everyone present. This was British pragmatism of
the kind that Lemkin abhorred.
Lemkin ignored Lord Porter. He spoke with his usual
passion about genocide, the evidence from the Nuremberg
trial, the need for practical responses, the vital role of the
criminal law. He argued against general declarations about
human rights of the kind that would be raised at the first
General Assembly of the United Nations, to be held later
that year. How could piracy and forgery be international
crimes, he asked rhetorically, but not the extermination of
millions? He made a pitch for genocide to be “declared an
international crime,” reminding those in the room about
Axis Rule. Anyone involved in “the criminal philosophy of
genocide” should be treated as a criminal, he told those
present.
Politely listened to, Lemkin awaited the response. A
couple of speakers offered general support, but none
endorsed his plea for hard action. If Lauterpacht was there
(he was preparing for a trip to Copenhagen), the record
made clear that he felt no need to intervene against
Lemkin. Perhaps he sensed the mood in the room, and he
was right. The draft resolutions prepared that week made
no reference to genocide or any other international crimes.
Disappointed, Lemkin returned to London and sent
thanks to Maxwell Fyfe, for “moral and professional
inspiration.” The Cambridge conference gave his ideas no
more than a “cool reception,” he wrote, but he wouldn’t
give up:
We cannot keep telling the world in endless sentences: Don’t
murder members of national, racial and religious groups; don’t
sterilize them; don’t impose abortions on them; don’t steal
children from them; don’t compel their women to bear children for
your country; and so on. But we must tell the world now, at this
unique occasion, don’t practice Genocide.
The failure prompted a renewed bout of frantic letter
writing. Lemkin wrote to Judge Parker, the junior American
judge, with a vaguely optimistic tone. “I think I succeeded
in convincing the audience as to the usefulness of such a
concept of law,” he explained, ever hopeful.
Lemkin was unaware that his earlier advocacy efforts had
persuaded some to his view. On August 26, the day he
wrote to Maxwell Fyfe, The New York Times published an
editorial that commended Lemkin, recognizing genocide to
be a crime of “distinct technique and distinct
consequences.” What remained, the newspaper informed
its readers, was for the term to be incorporated into
international law, a task that “Professor Lemkin has already
half accomplished.”
149
LEMKIN RETURNED to Nuremberg in time to hear the
defendants’ brief closing statements. Dr. Gilbert observed
the group of twenty-one as tense and somewhat depressed,
after a month of horror stories about the SS and its
associate organizations, with an air of “hurt surprise that
the prosecution still considered them criminals.” Maxwell
Fyfe’s closing speech offered a full-blooded condemnation
of the Nazis’ “demonic” plans. Pushing aside the restraint
of Shawcross, he brimmed with vitriol at the “awful crime
of genocide” reflected in Hitler’s ideology and Mein
Kampf’s message of group struggle.
Lemkin believed the British to have been won over,
leaving the Americans isolated. Despite Jackson’s press
release in July, his fellow American prosecutor Telford
Taylor made no mention of genocide when he spoke after
Maxwell Fyfe. The French, by contrast, invoked “genocide”
as a catchall to cover all the crimes, from concentration
camps to enslavement. The Soviet prosecutor Rudenko
characterized the SS as a genocidal entity, so that anyone
associated with the organization was complicit in genocide.
The claim had potentially far-reaching consequences.
Finally, on the last day of the month, August 31, the
defendants had their chance to address the judges. Göring
spoke first, defending the German people as free from guilt
and denying his own knowledge as to the terrible facts.
Hess fell into customary incoherence, recovering
sufficiently to reassure the judges that if he had to start
again he “would act just as I have acted.” Ribbentrop,
Keitel, and Kaltenbrunner spoke next, then Rosenberg, who
surprised Lemkin and many others by recognizing genocide
as a crime, but one that also protected German people as a
group. At the same time, he denied his own guilt for
genocide or for any other crimes.
Frank was the seventh to speak. Many in courtroom 600
wondered what he might say, what direction he would take
given his earlier admission of partial responsibility. This
time he began by recognizing that all the defendants had
turned
away
from
God
without
imagining
the
consequences. In this way, he became “more and more
deeply involved in guilt,” something he felt as the spirits of
the dead passed through the courtroom, millions who
perished “unquestioned and unheard.” He sought to obtain
assistance from the decision he had taken not to destroy
the diaries and to voluntarily “surrender” them at the end,
in the hour in which he lost his liberty.
He returned to the sense of collective responsibility
articulated a few months earlier. He did not wish to “leave
any hidden guilt which I have not accounted for behind me
in this world,” he told the judges. Yes, he was responsible
for the matters for which he had to answer. Yes, he
acknowledged a “degree of guilt.” Yes, he was “a champion
of Adolf Hitler, his movement, and his Reich.”
Then came the “but,” which was broad and all
encompassing.
He felt the need to bring the judges back to something
he’d said in April, words that now bothered him and
required rectification. He was referring to his “thousand
years” admission, words that Jackson and Shawcross and
other prosecutors seized upon but he realized had been
misunderstood. On reflection, he hadn’t been careful
enough and had fallen into error in speaking those words.
With the passage of time, he observed a different reality,
one in which Germany had already paid a sufficient price.
So he said, “Every possible guilt incurred by our nation has
already been completely wiped out.”
All in the courtroom listened attentively as he continued.
Germany’s guilt had been erased “by the conduct of our
war-time enemies towards our nation and its soldiers.”
Such conduct had been entirely excluded from the trial, he
was saying, a lopsided justice. Mass crimes “of the most
frightful sort” had been committed against Germans by
Russians, Poles, and Czechs. Unconsciously perhaps, he
evoked the view once again of one group against another.
Looking toward his fellow defendants, he then posed a
question: “Who shall ever judge these crimes against the
German people?” The question was left hanging. At a
stroke, the earlier admission of partial guilt was retracted.
After Frank, the fourteen other defendants took their
turns. None offered an admission of responsibility.
After the last had spoken, Lord Justice Lawrence
announced that the tribunal would adjourn until September
23. Judgment would be given on that day.
150
BY THE TIME the hearings ended, Lemkin still had no news
about his family. Only in the middle of September, during
the adjournment, did he learn what had befallen Bella and
Josef. The information came from his brother Elias in the
course of a reunion that took place in Munich. He learned
that his own family was a part of “the files of the
Nuremberg trials.”
Elias had survived by a stroke of good fortune, in
circumstances described to me by his son Saul Lemkin.
Saul was twelve in June 1941, living with his parents in
Wołkowysk, when the family decided to take a Soviet
holiday. “We were sitting in the dacha when my aunty said
something happened with the war, so we turned on the
radio.” They learned that Hitler had broken the pact with
Stalin, launching Operation Barbarossa, that the Germans
occupied Wołkowysk a week later, and that Bella and Josef
were trapped along with the rest of the family left at home.
A short vacation became three years in the heartland of
the Soviet Union. They knew that “Uncle Rafael” was safe
in North Carolina, but the murder of Bella and Josef, and
the decision not to bring them on the vacation due to ill
health, became a source of acute tension between the
brothers Rafael and Elias. “My uncle was quite mad that
we left them, but alas we didn’t know what was going to
happen.” Saul seemed dejected, seventy years after the
events, and apologetic. “We just went for a visit; nobody
knew the war would start, not even Stalin.”
Saul and his family remained in Moscow until July 1942.
When their visas ran out, they took a train across the Urals
to Ufa, the capital of Bashkortostan, a small Soviet
republic. They returned to Moscow in February 1944. After
the war, they returned to Poland, then to a displaced
persons camp in Berlin, which was where Lemkin found
them. “My uncle called us in Berlin in August 1946. He was
at Nuremberg; he spoke to me,” Saul explains. “He told my
father not to stay in Berlin too long, the Russians might
blockade the city.”
With Lemkin’s help, the Americans arranged for the
family to travel from Berlin to Munich, to another camp.
Saul was in the hospital recovering from an operation on
his appendix when Lemkin joined them in mid-September.
“He came to visit me in the hospital with his secretary
Madame Charlet, an American, in the U.S. Army. She spoke
a little Russian, a very nice woman. My uncle looked very
well, nice clothes; we embraced. He told me, ‘You must
come to America.’ ”
They shared what little information they had about events
in Wołkowysk. “My father, Elias, found out there were only
a few Jews remaining when the Soviets came in the
summer of 1944, maybe no more than fifty or sixty.” A
repetition of events in Żółkiew and Dubno and tens of
thousands of other places small and large across central
Europe, reflected in the stones of Treblinka. Saul spoke
gently about this subject, but the light in his eyes was
dimmed. “The rest, we knew what happened to them. A Jew
sent us a letter. My grandparents were taken to an
unknown destination. They were dead.”
Did Saul have a photograph of Bella and Josef? No. He
learned that the last transport from Wołkowysk was in
January 1943 to Auschwitz, but it was an earlier transport
that took his grandparents to another place, not far away.
“Bella and Josef went to Treblinka, because it wasn’t far
away.”
He spoke these words with much sadness, a weary and
deep sadness, and then he perked up.
“What’s the name of that famous journalist, the one who
wrote Life and Fate?” he asked.
Vasily Grossman.
“That’s it; he’s the one who wrote about Treblinka. I read
it and thought of my grandparents.”
Saul believed that Uncle Rafael never knew they went to
Treblinka. “That information came only later, long after he
was gone.”
Saul’s account offered a frame of sorts for another story.
In this way did I learn that my grandmother Malke
Flaschner, who lived in Żółkiew on the same street as the
Lauterpachts, had died in Treblinka on the same street as
the Lemkins.
“There is one thing I must say about that time,” Saul said
with a sudden sense of cheer. “The Germans in the clinic
were very nice to me, very polite. Compared to life in
Poland, Germany was a paradise for the Jews.” If Saul
harbored ill feelings, he kept them under wraps.
“Of course, Uncle Rafael had a different view,” he
continued. “There were many Germans in the clinic, but my
uncle would not look at them.” Saul fixed his eyes on mine.
“He hated them. For him, they were poison. He hated
them.”
151
LAUTERPACHT SPENT September in Cambridge, awaiting a
judgment he hoped might offer protection for individuals
and support for an international bill of rights. Less voluble
than Lemkin, without displaying visible emotion, he was no
less passionate or caring. The trial had affected him deeply,
but he didn’t like to show it, even to his son, who spent
time with him that month, preparing to enter his second
year as an undergraduate at Trinity.
Looking back, Eli now wondered if something changed in
his father around that time. The trial and news of the family
took a toll and must have influenced the direction of his
work. Eli felt this to be the time when he developed a
better—or at least more conscious—understanding of his
father’s work.
“It’s not just that there was a greater intellectual
involvement on my part; it’s that I was aware of something
else, that this was a particularly difficult period.” Inka’s
imminent arrival in Cambridge underscored the sense of
loss but also offered hope.
“Emotionally, he was so deeply involved in the trial,” Eli
added. He didn’t talk much about those matters and “never
said anything to me about his parents, not once.” This was
a source of recent reflection for Eli, who recognized he’d
never asked himself the questions I had been exploring. He
had accepted the situation for what it was, adopting his
father’s approach. The difficulties and the pain were
reflected in other ways, not articulated in words.
I asked about his father’s views on the term “genocide.”
He wouldn’t have liked it, because it was too “impractical,”
Eli replied, and he might even have thought it to be
dangerous. One of Lauterpacht’s contacts at that time was
Egon Schwelb, the same man who met and encouraged
Lemkin in May 1946. Eli thought Schwelb to have been a
strong supporter of his father’s approach to individual
rights, an admirer of his intellect and work. In one letter
Schwelb noted Lauterpacht’s belief in the “close
connection” between “crimes against humanity” in the
Nuremberg trial and “the idea of fundamental Human
Rights and their protection in criminal law.” The letter from
Schwelb also confirmed that Lauterpacht was “not too
much in favor” of “the so-called crime of Genocide,” and
offered an explanation: Lauterpacht thought that “if one
emphasises too much that it is a crime to kill a whole
people, it may weaken the conviction that it is already a
crime to kill one individual.”
Schwelb also knew that Lauterpacht wasn’t too welldisposed to Lemkin, in a personal sense. There wasn’t
antagonism, certainly, and no doubt Lauterpacht
appreciated “the drive, idealism and candour of Dr.
Lemkin.” These were words of faint praise. However, the
formal Cambridge professor didn’t recognize the former
Polish prosecutor as a real scholar or a man with serious
intellectual abilities, and that mattered. Lauterpacht and
Schwelb agreed that it was “advisable” to “put right” the
relationship between crimes against humanity and
genocide, in favor of the former. Putting things right meant
silence. The best would be for the tribunal to say nothing
about genocide.
152
NIKLAS FRANK WAS seven years old in September 1946, old
enough to recollect the air of anxiety that hung around the
family home in the weeks leading up to the judgment. That
month, he took a trip to Nuremberg and saw his father, the
first time in more than a year. The visit evoked a memory
without sentiment.
By then, the Frank family was pretty much impecunious,
gathering food and information about the trial as best it
could. More or less estranged from Frank, Brigitte
maintained contact with a journalist in Bavaria, a man who
offered a summary of the trial each evening on German
radio. “We listened every night, at seven o’clock,” Niklas
recalled. Occasionally, the journalist paid a visit, and
sometimes he brought chocolate, a rare treat for the
children. He was looking for snippets of information to use
on his radio program. Niklas remembered one detail, that
the journalist was Jewish: “My mother wrote to my father in
the prison. ‘I like this Mr. Gaston Oulman, and would like
that you meet each other in the prison.’ ”
Niklas chuckled at the crazy idea.
“My mother’s letter went on. ‘He is a Jew, but I think he
has some heart.’ ” Niklas paused. “She wrote that,” Niklas
exclaimed. “Can you imagine, that ‘he has some heart’? The
end of the Nuremberg process, from the radio my mother
knew all the crimes the Germans had done, yet she was still
able to write such a sentence.”
He shook his head.
“Unbelievable,” he said, before pausing.
“It was right that my father should be put on trial.” He
was consistent in this view. Yes, when his father took the
stand in April, he’d offered an expression of guilt, of sorts.
“That was a good thing, but was it genuine?” Niklas had
his doubts, confirmed by the change of direction in August.
“His true character emerged with that second statement,”
Niklas said bluntly: his father was a weak man.
In September, the whole family traveled to Nuremberg.
Niklas showed me a photograph, his mother in a large
black hat, black coat and skirt, sparrow legs, smiling,
hurrying him along with his sister.
“It was on September 24, I think. I went with my mother;
we were five children. We entered the Palace of Justice,
into a big room, maybe twenty meters long. On the right
side were windows; on the opposite side of the room, I
recognized Göring, there with his family. I was sitting on
the lap of my mother; we talked to my father through a
glass window, with little holes.”
Credit 152.1
Brigitte Frank in Nuremberg, September 1946 (Niklas on the left)
How was his father?
“He was smiling, trying to be happy. I remember too that
my father lied to me.”
Meaning?
“He said, ‘In two or three months’ time, we will celebrate
Christmas in Schliersee, at home, and we will be very
happy all together.’ I was thinking, why are you lying? I
knew from school, from what my friends were saying, what
was going to happen. You must never lie to a seven-year-old
child; it is never forgotten.”
This was a week before the judgment. As far as Niklas
was able to recall, he spoke not a word to his father.
Nothing.
“I didn’t say good-bye. The whole thing lasted not more
than six or seven minutes. There were no tears. I was really
sad. Sad that he lied to me. Sad that he didn’t tell me the
truth about what might happen to him. Sad about what
would happen to us.”
153
THE JUDGMENT CAME DOWN a little later than expected, a week
after the Franks visited, over the course of two glorious,
golden autumn days, on September 30 and October 1. The
city was apprehensive, with security and tanks around the
Palace of Justice more visible than usual. Entry to the
courtroom, which was packed, was subject to severe
restrictions.
Frank didn’t have far to travel from his cell in the old
brick building behind the Palace of Justice, since torn
down. Military police in white helmets escorted him along a
covered corridor, up the elevator, through the sliding door,
into the middle of the front row of the defendants’ dock. He
wore the usual dark glasses, his left hand gloved and
purposely kept out of sight.
Lauterpacht had flown in from England, arriving two days
before the judgment. He traveled with a group of British
VIPs, including Lord Wright, the head of the British War
Crimes Executive. Khaki Roberts was with them, the
barrister who had led the fight against Lemkin and the
charge of genocide a year earlier. They all stayed at the
Grand Hotel, to be collected at the hotel reception at 9:15
in the morning on the day of the judgment, from there to be
driven to the Palace of Justice.
Lemkin was in Paris on September 30, attending the
Peace Conference. He hoped to persuade the delegates to
insert a few words on genocide in the final text. His health
hadn’t improved; once more he was benefiting from the
services of an American military hospital. It was there he
learned of the judgment, on a radio next to his bed.
Leon was also in Paris, not far away, at work with
returning deportees and refugees. Many in the Lutetia
Hotel had a great interest in the outcome of the trial.
The judgment was divided into two parts. The first day,
Monday, September 30, would be devoted to the overall
facts and findings on the law; the guilt of the individual
defendants would only be addressed on the second day. As
to the facts, the judges separated them into neat little
sections, artificial but authoritative, in a way that makes
lawyers comfortable. The complexities of history and
human interaction would be simplified into a narrative that
neatly described the Nazi seizure of power, acts of
aggression across Europe, the conduct of war. Twelve years
of mayhem and horror and killing had been aired over the
course of 453 open hearings in the courtroom. Ninety-four
witnesses had appeared, thirty-three for the prosecution
and sixty-one for the defense.
The judges dealt expeditiously with the organizations.
The Nazi leadership, Gestapo, SD, and SS were all found to
be culpable, along with the Waffen-SS army and the half a
million men under its command. This created a very large
pool of criminals. The SA, Reich cabinet, and General Staff
and High Command of the Wehrmacht were let off the
hook, an act of judicial compromise.
The judges then turned to the acts of conspiracy,
aggression, and war crimes. Crimes against humanity got a
central place in the judgment and, for the first time in
history, were recognized to be an established part of
international law. The courtroom listened in silence to the
narrative: murder, ill-treatment, pillage, slave labor,
persecutions, all giving rise to international criminality.
It must have been excruciating for Frank and the other
defendants, listening carefully for any hint about their
prospects. The acquittal of the three organizations
distressed the prosecution but offered some hope to the
defendants, the swing of a pendulum. On which side would
it swing for Frank? Had he done enough to save himself
from the gallows? Was the initial admission of collective
guilt sufficient, or was it undone by the later retraction?
Frank’s anxiety would not have been assuaged by the
words of the Soviet judge Nikitchenko, who invoked once
more words taken from Frank’s diary to describe the final
chapter of Nazi history and crimes against humanity. A
“thousand years,” again and again.
The tribunal adopted the essence of the words written by
Lauterpacht but spoken by Shawcross, of international
crimes “committed by men, not abstract entities.” Only by
punishing the individuals who committed such crimes, the
judges said, could the provisions of international law be
enforced. Individuals had international duties that
“transcend the national obligations of obedience imposed
by the individual state.”
By contrast, genocide got no mention on the first day.
This was despite the support of the British, French, and
Soviet prosecutors and Jackson’s press release. Not one of
the eight judges who spoke on that first day used Lemkin’s
word, and none evoked the function of the law to protect
groups. Lemkin would have been bereft, lying in a bed in a
faraway Paris hospital, hoping for what might come on the
second day.
There was no real explanation for the omission, just a few
bare words from Judge Nikitchenko. The Soviet judge said
that the only acts that could constitute crimes against
humanity were those committed after the war began in
September 1939. No war, no crime against humanity. In
this way, the tribunal excluded from its judgment
everything that happened before September 1939, however
terrible the acts. Lemkin’s effort to outlaw atrocity at all
times, whether committed during peace or war, was cast
aside because of the comma inserted late into Article 6(c)
of the charter, the afterthought that Lemkin feared. Leon’s
expulsion from Vienna in January 1939, together with all
the actions taken against his family and hundreds of
thousands of others before September 1939, was not
treated as a crime.
The judges recognized the difficulty this would cause.
Political opponents were murdered in Germany before the
war, Judge Nikitchenko reminded those present. Many
individuals were kept in concentration camps, in
circumstances of horror and cruelty, and a great number
were killed. A policy of terror was carried out on a vast
scale, organized and systematic, and the persecution,
repression, and murder of civilians in Germany before the
war of 1939 were ruthless. The actions against the Jews
before the war were established “beyond all doubt.” Yet
“revolting and horrible” as these acts were, the comma
inserted into the text of the charter excluded them from the
tribunal’s jurisdiction. We were powerless to do anything
else, the judges said.
Thus did the first day of judgment deal a crushing blow to
Lemkin. Lauterpacht, sitting in the courtroom, would not
have been troubled. The curtain that divided September
1939 from that which came before was impermeable, the
consequence of rules agreed to in the Nuremberg Charter
the logic of the law. Practical Lauterpacht had argued for
this result in the drafts he prepared for Shawcross in July.
Passionate Lemkin had argued against it in Cambridge the
following month.
—
After the first day’s hearing, those present dispersed to
offices, homes, prison cells, and hotels to dissect what was
said, to predict what might follow the next day. Rebecca
West left the Palace of Justice to pay a visit to a small
village not far from Nuremberg. There she encountered a
German woman who, having learned that the English
writer was attending the trial, launched into a litany of
complaints about the Nazis. They had posted foreign
workers near her village, “two thousand wretched,
cannibals, scum of the earth, Russians, Balks, Balts, Slavs.”
This woman was interested in the trial, didn’t object to it,
but she did so wish they hadn’t appointed a Jew as chief
prosecutor. Pressed to explain, the woman identified David
Maxwell Fyfe as the offending individual. When Rebecca
West protested the error, the woman responded curtly,
“Who would call his son David, but a Jew?”
154
LORD JUSTICE LAWRENCE entered the courtroom at 9:30
precisely on the second day of judgment to deliver a
separate judgment for each of the twenty-one defendants
present. He carried with him a note that he’d written out
on the letterhead of the British War Crimes Executive, a
crib sheet that listed the judgment and sentence for each
defendant. Marjorie Lawrence would later paste it into the
family scrapbook.
The judges would begin by setting out their reasons for
declaring the guilt or innocence of each defendant. Lord
Justice Lawrence adopted a grave tone.
Frank sat in the middle of the front row, eyes hidden
behind dark glasses. Lauterpacht sat at the British table,
just a short distance from the defendant most directly
responsible for the murders of his parents, siblings, uncle,
and aunt. Lemkin waited in Paris, a wireless close by.
Lawrence began with Göring, who at times during the
trial “recalled the madam of a brothel,” Rebecca West
observed from the press gallery. He entered through the
sliding door and “looked surprised.” Guilty on all counts.
Sir Geoffrey Lawrence then dealt with the next five
defendants. All guilty. Judge Nikitchenko convicted
Rosenberg. The attempt to explain the true purpose of his
racial politics was entirely without any merit. Guilty.
Now it was Frank’s turn. He sat without emotion, looked
at the floor. Judge Biddle, embroiled in a messy love affair
with Rebecca West, read from the prepared text. The
decision was reached three weeks earlier, although Frank
didn’t know that. Biddle summarized the lawyer’s role,
from the time he joined the Nazi Party in 1927, through the
presidency of the Academy for German Law, to his
appointment as governor-general. In the absence of
evidence, Frank escaped conviction on count one, no
proven involvement in the decision to wage aggressive war.
A brief respite.
Biddle turned to count three (war crimes) and count four
(crimes against humanity). Both concerned events in
Poland after the war began, within the jurisdiction of the
tribunal. Frank was involved in the destruction of Poland as
a national entity. He exploited its resources to support the
German war effort, crushing opposition with utmost
harshness. He unleashed a reign of terror. Concentration
camps were introduced on his territory, including
“notorious Treblinka and Maidanek.” Thousands of Poles
were liquidated, including “leading representatives” of the
intelligentsia. Slave labor was deported to Germany. Jews
were persecuted by being forced into ghettos,
discriminated against, starved, exterminated.
The judges recognized Frank’s expression of “terrible
guilt” for atrocities committed on the territory over which
he reigned. Yet ultimately his defense was largely an
attempt to prove that he wasn’t responsible, because the
activities were not under his control or because he didn’t
know of them.
“It…may well be true that some of the crimes committed
in the Government General were committed without the
knowledge of Frank,” Biddle concluded, “and even
occasionally despite his opposition.” Perhaps too not all the
criminal policies originated with him. Nevertheless, he was
“a willing and knowing” participant in the terror, the
economic exploitation of Poland, the acts that led to death
by starvation of vast numbers of people. He was involved in
the deportation to Germany of over a million Poles. He was
implicated in a program that involved the murder of at
least three million Jews.
For these reasons, he was guilty of war crimes and of
crimes against humanity.
Biddle did not use the word “genocide.”
Frank listened attentively, seated quietly as the
remaining judgments were handed down. Of the twentyone defendants present, three were acquitted. Hjalmar
Schacht, the former president of the Reichsbank, got off
because it wasn’t proven that he knew of the aggressive
plans for war. Franz von Papen, Hitler’s vice-chancellor for
eighteen months, was acquitted for the same reason. Hans
Fritzsche, a small fry in Goebbels’s Ministry of Propaganda
and an inadequate substitute for his absent boss, was
acquitted for lack of evidence that he intended to incite the
German people to commit atrocities. Several of the others
were found to have committed crimes against humanity, but
none were found guilty of genocide. The word was
unspoken.
The tribunal adjourned for lunch. Sentences would be
pronounced after the break. Frank joined in offering
congratulations to the three who were acquitted.
155
AFTER LUNCH, all eyes were turned toward the small wooden
door at the back of the dock, waiting for each defendant to
enter and face judgment. “Open, shut, open, shut,” once
again, the correspondent R. W. Cooper told the readers of
The Times.
The tribunal reconvened at ten to three. For the first time
in the yearlong trial, the eighteen defendants who were
found guilty and awaited only the details of their
punishment were treated as individuals, not brought into
the courtroom as a group. Each awaited his turn outside
courtroom 600 at the foot of the elevator. They entered the
courtroom one at a time to listen to the sentence, then
leave.
Those who weren’t present in courtroom 600 that
afternoon would not see this most dramatic moment of the
trial. Handing down the punishment of each individual
defendant was not filmed for public viewing to protect the
dignity of each defendant. Frank came in at number seven.
Of the first six, five were sentenced to death: Göring,
Ribbentrop, Keitel, Kaltenbrunner, and Rosenberg. Rudolf
Hess escaped the gallows and was sentenced to life
imprisonment.
As his turn came, Frank was the seventh to travel up the
elevator and pass through the sliding door. On entering, he
lost all sense of direction and stood with his back to the
judges. The guards had to spin him around to face the
judges. Rebecca West noticed the moment. A form of
protest? No. She interpreted it as “odd proof” of Frank’s
disturbed state. Facing the judges, he listened in silence,
and not without courage, as some noted. Lord Justice
Lawrence declared the sentence in just a few words.
“On the Counts of the Indictment on which you have been
convicted, the Tribunal sentences you to death by
hanging.” Through the headphones, Frank heard, “Tode
durch den Strang” (Death by the rope).
Frank would never know that his acquaintance with
Henri Donnedieu de Vabres offered a glimmer of hope, that
the Frenchman tried to help him. Right to the end,
Donnedieu argued for a sentence of life imprisonment, not
death, but he was alone, overruled by the others, all seven
of them. Judge Biddle was surprised by his French
colleague, “curiously tender” toward the German jurist,
now characterized as an international criminal. Perhaps the
American judge, like Yves Beigbeder, didn’t know of
Frank’s invitation to Donnedieu to visit Berlin in 1935.
Credit 155.1
Sir Geoffrey Lawrence’s crib sheet, October 1, 1946
After hearing the verdict, Frank returned to his cell. Dr.
Gilbert met him, as he did each defendant. Frank smiled
politely, unable to look the psychologist in the eye. Such
confidence as remained had evaporated.
“Death by hanging.”
Frank spoke the words softly. He nodded his head as he
spoke, as though in acquiescence. “I deserved it and I
expected it.” He said no more, offering no explanation to
Dr. Gilbert or, later, to any member of his family of why he
acted as he had.
156
THE JUDGMENT CAME as a relief to Lauterpacht. His
arguments on crimes against humanity, endorsed by the
tribunal, were now a part of international law. The
protection of the individual, and the idea of individual
criminal responsibility for the worst crimes, would be a
part of the new legal order. The sovereignty of the state
would no longer provide absolute refuge for crimes on such
a scale, in theory at least.
Shortly after the judgment, he received a note from
Shawcross. “I hope you will always feel some satisfaction in
having had this leading hand in something which may have
a real influence on the future conduct of international
relations.” If he felt any such satisfaction, he never
mentioned it publicly or even privately. Not to his son, not
to Inka.
Lemkin’s reaction was different. He was devastated by
the silence on genocide, compounding his earlier sense of
the “Nuremberg nightmare.” There was no mention in the
judgment even that it had been argued, or that it was
supported by three of the four prosecuting powers. (My
own experience before international courts is that the
summary of the arguments made, even if without success,
offers some comfort; it also opens the door to future
arguments in other cases.) Lemkin was equally horrified
that the crimes committed before the war were entirely
ignored.
Later Lemkin met Henry King, a junior American
prosecutor, who described the Pole as “unshaven” and
“disheveled,” his clothing in tatters. Lemkin confided that
the verdict was “the blackest day” of his life. It was worse
even than the moment he learned, a month earlier, that
Bella and Josef had perished.
Leon received news of the judgment in Paris. The
following morning, Lucette, a young girl who lived nearby,
collected my mother, Leon’s eight-year-old daughter, and
walked her to school. Lucette observed Leon in prayer, a
ritual he went through every morning, to offer a sense of
connection, he would tell my mother, a sense of “belonging
to a group that had disappeared.”
Leon never told me what he thought of the trial or the
judgment, whether such a thing could ever be adequate as
a means of accountability. He was delighted, however, by
my choice of career.
157
TWELVE DEFENDANTS WERE sentenced to death with no right of
appeal. They included Frank, Rosenberg, and SeyssInquart, who didn’t have long to wait for the act of
execution by hanging. The pope made a plea for mercy for
Frank, which was rejected. The penalty posed no moral
dilemma for Lord Justice Lawrence; his daughter Robby
told me that her father had condemned several criminals to
the gallows in England.
“He considered it to be the just punishment for people
who had done very evil things,” she explained. “He was
glad when the death penalty ended in Britain, but I don’t
think he ever doubted that it was proper in this case, for
these defendants.”
Between the day of judgment and the day of execution,
President Truman wrote to Lord Justice Lawrence. He
expressed appreciation for the “faithful services” the judge
rendered to “the strengthening of international law and
justice.”
Two weeks later, on the morning of October 16, a
headline appeared in the Daily Express. “Göring is
executed first at 1 a.m.,” it reported, followed by ten other
defendants. The article was famously wrong. Göring
escaped the noose, having committed suicide shortly before
the scheduled hour of execution.
Ribbentrop was the first to hang; Frank moved up the
pecking order to number five. The execution took place in
the gym of the Palace of Justice, to which he was
accompanied by the U.S. Army priest Sixtus O’Connor.
Nervous, he walked across the courtyard and into the gym,
closing his eyes, swallowing repeatedly as a black hood was
placed over his head. He said a few final words.
The Times correspondent R. W. Cooper was in France
when news of the hangings emerged later that day. “The
end came in a little Paris restaurant,” he wrote in his
memoir. The musicians were strumming a composition
called “Insensiblement,” later to become Django
Reinhardt’s favorite tune. The photographs of the hanged,
including Frank, were posted on the back of the evening
paper, available in the restaurant for all to see.
“Ça, c’est beau à voir,” a patron murmured. “Ça, c’est
beau.” Then he idly turned the page.
158
SEVERAL HUNDRED MILES AWAY, near the small village of
Neuhaus am Schliersee in Bavaria, the younger children of
Hans Frank were at kindergarten. Brigitte Frank collected
them on the afternoon of the hanging.
“My mother came in flowery spring clothes to tell us that
Father was now in heaven,” Niklas recalled. “My sisters
and brother started to cry, and I was quiet, because I knew
now it had happened. I think this was when a big hurt
began, when my cold reaction from this family began.”
Years later, Niklas met Sixtus O’Connor, the chaplain who
accompanied Frank to the gym. Your father went to the
gallows smiling, the chaplain told him. “Even in the prison
cell in Nuremberg,” he added, “your father was afraid of
your mother.”
Niklas had not forgotten that day, one that he often
thought about. Together we visited the empty prison wing
of Nuremberg’s Palace of Justice and sat in a cell like the
one in which his father was held. “The funny thing is,”
Niklas said, “when they came to take my father to the
gallows, they opened the door, my father was kneeling.”
Niklas got down on his knees to show me. “He said to the
priest, ‘Father, my mother when I was a little boy, my
mother used to give me the cross every morning when I
was leaving for school.’ ” Niklas made the mark of the cross
on his forehead. “Please do this also now,” Frank asked the
priest.
Niklas wondered whether it was a show. “Maybe it was
one of those moments, very near to the gallows, to the
death…he knew he will not survive the night of the
sixteenth of October. Maybe it was really an honest thing,
the only and last honest thing he did.”
Niklas was silent for a moment. “He wanted to go back to
being an innocent child again, what he was when his
mother made the sign on him.” He paused again, then said,
“It’s the first time I think about it. I think he wanted to be a
little boy again who had done nothing of all those crimes.”
Yet Niklas had no doubts about the lack of sincerity in his
father’s partial expression of guilt in the courtroom and no
reservations about the hanging of his father. “I am opposed
to the death penalty,” he said without emotion, “except for
my father.” During one of our conversations, he recalled
the letter his father wrote to Dr. Seidl, his lawyer, the
evening before the execution. “He wrote, ‘I am not a
criminal.’ ” Niklas spoke the words with disgust. “So really,
he took back everything he confessed during the trial.”
As we talked of their last meeting, the conversation with
the chaplain, the silent fortitude of his mother, Niklas put
his hand into the breast pocket of his jacket and took out a
leather wallet. “He was a criminal,” he said quietly,
removing from the wallet a small black-and-white
photograph, worn and faded. He handed it over. An image
of his father’s body, laid out on a cot, lifeless, taken a few
minutes after the hanging, a label across his chest.
“Every day I look at this,” Niklas said. “To remind me, to
make sure, that he is dead.”
Credit 158.1
Hans Frank, hanged, October 16, 1946
EPILOGUE
To the Woods
THE TRIAL AT Nuremberg had consequences.
A few weeks after its end, the United Nations General
Assembly gathered in upstate New York. On the agenda for
December 11, 1946, were a raft of draft resolutions to
create a new world order. Two related to the trial.
Desiring to lay the path for an international bill of rights,
the General Assembly affirmed that the principles of
international law recognized by the Charter of the
Nuremberg Tribunal—including crimes against humanity—
were a part of international law. By resolution 95, the
General Assembly endorsed Lauterpacht’s ideas and
decided to find a place for the individual in the new
international order.
The General Assembly then adopted resolution 96. This
went beyond what the judges at Nuremberg had decided:
noting that genocide denied the “right of existence of
entire human groups,” the Assembly decided to override
the ruling and affirm that “genocide is a crime under
international law.” Where judges feared to tread,
governments legislated into existence a rule to reflect
Lemkin’s work.
The resolution helped Lemkin to recover from “the
blackest day” of his life. His energies revived, he prepared
a draft convention on genocide and sought to persuade
governments across the world to support his instrument. It
was a hard slog over two years. On December 9, 1948, the
General Assembly adopted the Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the
first human rights treaty of the modern era. The treaty
came into force a little more than two years later, allowing
Lemkin to devote the final decade of his life to encouraging
countries to join the convention. By the time he died of a
heart attack in New York in 1959, France and the Soviet
Union had signed up. The United Kingdom joined in 1970,
and the United States became a party in 1988, after the
controversy that followed President Reagan’s visit to the
graves of SS officers at the Bitburg cemetery in West
Germany. Lemkin died without children. It was said that
few people attended his funeral, but Nancy Ackerly
recalled it differently. “There were several people there, not
the five or six reported by some, maybe for dramatic
effect,” she told me, and among them were “quite a few
women in veils.” He is buried in Flushing, New York.
Hersch Lauterpacht returned to Cambridge a day after
the judgment to devote himself to academic endeavors and
his family and to be with Inka. His work An International
Bill of the Rights of Man inspired the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights, adopted by the UN General Assembly on
December 10, 1948, one day after the Genocide
Convention. Disappointed that the declaration was not
legally binding, Lauterpacht hoped it might open the door
to a more forceful development. This came with agreement
on the European Convention on Human Rights, which was
signed in 1950. The Nuremburg prosecutor David Maxwell
Fyfe played a key role in the elaboration of the text that
created the first international human rights court to which
individuals would have access. Other regional and global
human rights instruments followed, but no treaty on crimes
against humanity has yet been adopted to parallel Lemkin’s
Genocide Convention. In 1955, Lauterpacht was elected the
British judge at the International Court of Justice in The
Hague, despite the opposition of some who thought him
insufficiently British. He died in 1960, before completing
his term of office, and is buried in Cambridge.
—
Lauterpacht and Lemkin were two young men in Lemberg
and Lwów. Their ideas have had global resonance, the
legacies reaching far and wide. The concepts of genocide
and crimes against humanity have developed side by side, a
relationship that connects the individual and the group.
Fifty summers passed before the idea of an international
criminal court became a reality, as states pushed and
pulled in different directions, unable to find a consensus on
the punishment of international crimes. Change finally
came in July 1998, catalyzed by atrocities in the former
Yugoslavia and Rwanda. That summer, more than 150
states agreed to a statute for an international criminal
court at a meeting in Rome. I enjoyed a peripheral role in
the negotiations, working with a colleague on the
preamble, the introductory words of the treaty, intended to
inspire. Working in the shadows, we inserted a simple line
into the preamble, one that stated “the duty of every State
to exercise its criminal jurisdiction over those responsible
for international crimes.” Seemingly innocuous, the line
survived the negotiating process to become the first
occasion on which states had recognized any such duty
under international law. Three generations after the idea of
an international court was debated by Henri Donnedieu de
Vabres and Hans Frank in Berlin in 1935, a new
international court was finally created, with the power to
rule on genocide and crimes against humanity.
Two months after agreement was reached on the ICC, in
September 1998 Jean-Paul Akayesu became the first person
ever to be convicted for the crime of genocide by an
international court. This followed a trial held at the
International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
A few weeks later, in November 1998, the House of Lords
in London ruled that Senator Augusto Pinochet, former
president of Chile, was not entitled to claim immunity from
the jurisdiction of the English courts because the acts of
torture for which he was said to be responsible were a
crime against humanity. This was the first time any national
court had ever handed down such a ruling.
In May 1999, the Serbian president Slobodan Milošević
became the first serving head of state to be indicted for
crimes against humanity, for alleged acts in Kosovo. In
November 2001, after he left office, genocide charges were
added to his indictment, in relation to atrocities in Bosnia,
at Srebrenica.
Six years passed. In March 2007 an American District
Court judge stripped John Kalymon of his American
nationality. Why? Because in August 1942 he served in the
Ukrainian Auxiliary Police, rounding up Jews in the grosse
Aktion. He assisted in the persecution of civilian
populations, a crime against humanity.
In September 2007, the International Court of Justice in
The Hague ruled that Serbia violated its obligation to
Bosnia and Herzegovina by failing to prevent a genocide in
Srebrenica. This was the first occasion on which any state
had been condemned by an international court for violating
the Genocide Convention.
In July 2010, President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan became
the first serving head of state to be indicted for genocide by
the International Criminal Court.
Two years later, in May 2012, Charles Taylor became the
first head of state to be convicted of crimes against
humanity. He was sentenced to fifty years in prison.
In 2015, the United Nations International Law
Commission started to work actively on the subject of
crimes against humanity, opening the way to a possible
companion to the convention on the prevention and
punishment of genocide.
The cases go on, as do the crimes. Today I work on cases
involving genocide or crimes against humanity in relation
to Serbia, Croatia, Libya, the United States, Rwanda,
Argentina, Chile, Israel and Palestine, the United Kingdom,
Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. Allegations of
genocide and crimes against humanity abound across the
globe, even as the ideas that inspired Lauterpacht and
Lemkin resonate along different paths.
An informal hierarchy has emerged. In the years after the
Nuremberg judgment, the word genocide gained traction in
political circles and in public discussion as the “crime of
crimes,” elevating the protection of groups above that of
individuals. Perhaps it was the power of Lemkin’s word, but
as Lauterpacht feared, there emerged a race between
victims, one in which a crime against humanity came to be
seen as the lesser evil. That was not the only unintended
consequence of the parallel efforts of Lauterpacht and
Lemkin. Proving the crime of genocide is difficult, and in
litigating cases I have seen for myself how the need to
prove the intent to destroy a group in whole or in part, as
the Genocide Convention requires, can have unhappy
psychological consequences. It enhances the sense of
solidarity among the members of the victim group while
reinforcing negative feelings toward the perpetrator group.
The term “genocide,” with its focus on the group, tends to
heighten a sense of “them” and “us,” burnishes feelings of
group identity, and may unwittingly give rise to the very
conditions that it seeks to address: by pitting one group
against another, it makes reconciliation less likely. I fear
that the crime of genocide has distorted the prosecution of
war crimes and crimes against humanity, because the
desire to be labeled a victim of genocide brings pressure on
prosecutors to indict for that crime. For some, to be labeled
a victim of genocide becomes “an essential component of
national identity” without contributing to the resolution of
historical disputes or making mass killings less frequent. It
was no surprise that an editorial in a leading newspaper, on
the occasion of the centenary of Turkish atrocities against
Armenians, suggested that the word “genocide” may be
unhelpful, because it “stirs up national outrage rather than
the sort of ruthless examination of the record the country
needs.”
Yet against these arguments, I am bound to accept that
the sense of group identity is a fact. As long ago as 1893,
the sociologist Louis Gumplowicz, in his book La lutte des
races (The struggle between the races), noted that “the
individual, when he comes into the world, is a member of a
group.” The view persists. “Our bloody nature,” the
biologist Edward O. Wilson wrote a century later, “is
ingrained because group-versus-group was a principal
driving force that made us what we are.” It seems that a
basic element of human nature is that “people feel
compelled to belong to groups and, having joined, consider
them superior to competing groups.”
This poses a serious challenge for our system of
international law confronted with a tangible tension: on the
one hand, people are killed because they happen to be
members of a certain group; on the other, the recognition
of that fact by the law tends to make more likely the
possibility of conflict between groups, by reinforcing the
sense of group identity. Perhaps Leopold Kohr got it right,
in the strong but private letter he wrote to his friend
Lemkin, that the crime of genocide will end up giving rise
to the very conditions it seeks to ameliorate.
—
What of the other main characters in the story?
After being liberated from Vittel, Miss Tilney worked for
the U.S. Army before returning to Paris. She lived there for
two more years, then returned to England. In the 1950s,
she traveled once more, this time as a missionary to South
Africa, and in 1964 she immigrated to the United States.
Her last home was in Coconut Grove, Miami, close to her
brother Fred, the retired bodybuilder and seller of quack
medicines. I was told that her circle of acquaintances
included Charles Atlas. She died in 1974. In 2013, I sent
the material I had uncovered about her to the Yad Vashem
memorial to the Holocaust in Jerusalem, along with two
affidavits, one provided by my mother, the other by Shula
Troman. On September 29, 2013, Miss Tilney was
recognized as a Righteous Among the Nations.
Sasha Krawec, who was saved by Miss Tilney from
deportation to Auschwitz, immigrated to the United States
after he was freed from Vittel. He traveled by ship from
Bremen to New York in 1946. I have been unable to find
any trace of what happened to him next.
Emil Lindenfeld remained in Vienna. He spent the last
two years of the war hiding with non-Jewish friends and
family as a “U-boat.” He remarried in 1961 and died in
1969 in Vienna, where he is buried.
Otto von Wächter went into hiding after the war,
eventually being taken in by the Vatican. In 1949, he played
a role as an extra in the film La Forza Del Destino, made in
Rome. He died there in mysterious circumstances, later
that year, under the protection of the Austrian bishop Alois
Hudal. Still on the run, he was indicted by the Polish
government for crimes of mass murder of more than
100,000 Poles in Lwów. His son Horst lives at Schloss
Hagenberg with his wife, convinced that his father was a
good man with a decent character, not a criminal, even as
new evidence of wrongdoing emerges. This includes the
apparent taking of a Bruegel painting and other artworks
from the National Museum in Kraków in December 1939.
Niklas Frank grew up to become a distinguished
journalist, eventually serving as foreign editor of Stern
magazine. In 1992, he returned to Warsaw and the building
he lived in as a child to interview Lech Wałęsa, newly
elected president of Poland. He didn’t tell Wałęsa that the
room in which the interview took place, and the table at
which they sat, were the ones around which his father had
once chased him. He lives in Hamburg with his wife and
has a daughter and two grandchildren.
In the summer of 2014, I traveled to Lviv with Niklas
Frank and Horst von Wächter. In the making of our film,
What Our Fathers Did: A Nazi Legacy, we visited the
destroyed synagogue in Żółkiew, a nearby mass grave, and
the university auditorium where Hans Frank had delivered
a big speech on August 1, 1942, in the presence of Otto von
Wächter. Niklas surprised us when he produced a copy of
the speech from his back pocket and read it out. The
following day, the three of us attended a ceremony of
remembrance to honor the dead of the Waffen-SS Galician
Division, created by Otto von Wächter in the spring of
1943, still venerated by the nationalistic, fringe Ukrainian
group that organized the event. Horst told me that this was
the best part of the trip, because men old and young came
up to him to celebrate his father. Did he mind, I asked, that
many of those men wore SS uniforms with swastikas?
“Why, should I?” Horst replied.
—
Leon and Rita Buchholz lived together in Paris for the
remainder of their lives, in the apartment that I remember
from my childhood, near the Gare du Nord. Leon lived until
1997, almost completing the full span of the century. Their
daughter, Ruth, married an Englishman in 1956 and moved
to London. She had two sons, of whom I was the first, and
later ran an antiquarian bookshop in central London,
specializing in illustrated books for children. I studied law
at Cambridge University, and it was there in 1982 that I
took a course on international law taught by Eli
Lauterpacht, Hersch’s grown-up son. In the summer of
1983, after my graduation, Leon and Rita visited
Cambridge, and together we attended a garden party at
Eli’s home. His mother, Rachel, Lauterpacht’s widow, was
there, and I distinctly recall the bob in her hair. Whether
she and Leon spoke I do not know, but if they did, and the
family connections to Vienna, Lemberg, and Żółkiew were
discussed, then Leon didn’t feel any need to share that
conversation with me.
In the autumn of 1983, I traveled to America, where I
spent a year as a visiting scholar at Harvard Law School.
Eli Lauterpacht wrote to me in the spring of 1984, inviting
me to apply for an academic position at Cambridge
University as a research fellow at a new research center he
was setting up on international law. Back then, and for the
quarter of a century that ensued, as collegiality blossomed
into friendship, we were unaware that our forebears had
lived on the same street, more than a century earlier. Thirty
years passed before Eli and I learned that his father and my
great-grandmother lived in Żółkiew at opposite ends of the
town, on east west street.
This we learned as a consequence of the invitation from
Lviv.
—
And what of Lviv? My first visit was in 2010, and I have
returned each year since. A century after its heyday, it
remains a wondrous city, yet with a dark and secret past,
where its inhabitants occupy spaces made by others. The
sweep of the buildings, the hiss of trams, the scent of coffee
and cherry, all are still there. The communities that
contested the city streets in November 1918 are largely
gone, and Ukrainians have emerged as dominant. Still, the
presence of others does linger. You feel it in the bricks,
helped by Wittlin, and observe it if you look very carefully:
you see it in the wings of the lion, the one that “looks down
so challengingly” from its perch above the entrance to 14
Rynok Square, astride the pages of an open book on which
the words “Pax Tibi Marce Evangelista Meus” may be seen
(“Peace to you, Mark, my evangelist!”); you see it in the
fading Polish street signs and in the angled, empty indents
in which a mezuzah once hung; you see it in the window of
the old Hungarian Crown pharmacy on Bernardyński
Square, once the most beautiful in all Galicia and
Lodomeria, and still today at night, when it is alight and
busy as ever.
—
After these visits, I can better understand the words of that
young student who approached me on that first trip to
explain in hushed tones how personally important my
lecture had been. In today’s Lviv, where Lemkin and
Lauterpacht are forgotten, identity and ancestry are
complex, dangerous matters. The city remains a “cup of
gall,” as it was for so many in times past.
The conversation with the young woman who inquired
about ancestry was not the only time such a message was
communicated to me in Lviv. In a restaurant, on the street,
after a talk, at the university, in a coffee shop, I heard
matters of identity and background be alluded to, in subtle
ways. I recall being introduced to Professor Rabinowich,
the remarkable teacher of law at the Lviv faculty who
taught human rights law during the darkest of times. “He’s
the one you should talk to,” several people told me. The
meaning was clear, a gentle reference to ancestry.
Someone suggested I might want to eat at the Golden
Rose, in the old medieval center between the town hall and
the city archives, in the shadow of the ruins of a synagogue
constructed in 1582 and destroyed on the orders of the
Germans in the summer of 1941. It presented itself as a
Jewish restaurant, a curiosity given the absence of Jewish
residents of the city nowadays. The first time I passed the
Golden Rose, in the company of my son, we peered through
a window and observed a clientele that gave the
impression, superficially at least, of having been
transported from the 1920s, a number of people dressed in
the large black hats and other paraphernalia associated
with the Orthodox Jewish community. We were horrified, a
place for tourists to dress up, collecting trademark black
garments and hats from pegs just inside the front entrance.
The restaurant offered traditional Jewish fare—along with
pork sausages—from a menu without prices. At the end of
the meal, the waiter invited diners to negotiate a deal on
the price.
Sitting in this restaurant, having finally summoned up the
courage to enter (an effort that stretched over five years), I
wondered again whether I was closer to the ideas of
Lauterpacht or Lemkin, or stood equidistant between them,
or sat with them both. Lemkin would probably have been
the more entertaining dinner companion, and Lauterpacht
the more intellectually rigorous conversationalist. The two
men shared an optimistic belief in the power of law to do
good and protect people and the need to change the law to
achieve that objective. Both agreed on the value of a single
human life and on the importance of being part of a
community. They disagreed fundamentally, however, on the
most effective way to achieve the protection of those
values, whether by focusing on the individual or the group.
Lauterpacht never embraced the idea of genocide. To the
end of his life, he was dismissive, both of the subject and,
perhaps more politely, of the man who concocted it, even if
he recognized the aspirational quality. Lemkin feared that
the separate projects of protecting individual human rights,
on the one hand, and protecting groups and preventing
genocide, on the other, were in contradiction. It might be
said that the two men have canceled each other out.
I saw the merits of both arguments, oscillating between
the two poles, caught in an intellectual limbo. So I parked
the matter and directed my energy into persuading the
mayor of Lviv to take a few steps to mark the
accomplishments of both men, along with the city’s
contribution to international law and justice. Tell me where
we should put plaques, the mayor told me, and he would
arrange for it to be done. Show me the way; show me the
route.
I would take Wittlin, the poet of hopeful idylls, infused
with the idea of a harmony among friends that cut across
the divide of groups, of the myth of Galicia and the city of
my grandfather’s lost childhood. I might start on Castle
Hill, then head where everything began, at the center on
Rynok Square, with its winged lion. Past the warring
factions I might breeze, across from the Lauterpacht home
on Teatralna Street, with its gated iron door, along May the
Third Street toward the home of Inka Katz and the window
from which she watched her mother being taken, past the
offices of the International Law Department at the
university, newly adorned with portraits of Lauterpacht and
Lemkin, and then on to the old law faculty building, up past
the home of Juliusz Makarewicz, up the winding streets
toward the great cathedral of St. George, to stand in the
square where Otto von Wächter gathered his SS Galicia
Division. A little beyond that, no more than a stone’s throw,
up on the hill, I might linger for a moment before the house
where Leon was born on Szeptyckich Street.
Then back down toward the building where Lemkin lived
in the year he debated with a professor about matters
Armenian and the right of states to kill their own citizens,
then on to the old Galician parliament where in August
1942 Frank delivered his murderous lecture, down to the
opera house before which children had stood with flags and
swastikas, to the playground of the Sobieski high school
where the Jews were rounded up, under the railway bridge
to the ghetto and Lemkin’s first home, to a room in a
tenement building in the poorest part of the city. From
there it’s just a short hop to Janowska, where Maurycy
Allerhand had the impudence to inquire of a camp guard
whether he had a soul, a few words spoken for which he
paid with his life, and on to the great railway station, from
which I could take the train to Zólkiew and, if I wanted,
beyond to Belzec and the end of the world.
I did take that train to Zólkiew, where I was met by
Lyudmyla, historian of that sad, depleted town. She was the
one who accompanied me to a place on the outskirts,
ignored by the authorities and all but a few of the
inhabitants. From her office in the old Zólkiewski fort, we
travelled along the east–west street, on a straight line that
would lead to a clearing in the woods. We started at the
patch of grass on the western end of that long street,
where my great-grandmother Malke’s house once stood,
past the fine Catholic and Ukrainian churches and the
dilapidated, soulful seventeenth-century synagogue, on to
the house with the floorboards where Clara Kramer had
hidden, just across from the old wooden church, past the
crossroads that marked the place I now knew to be Hersch
Lauterpacht’s place of birth. On we went, for one kilometer
and then another, across fields, through a gate, onto a path
of fine, crushed sand, by trees of oak and the sound of
cicadas and frogs and the smell of earth and then into a
bright autumn wood, to an area where Leon and
Lauterpacht might once have played. We left the sandy
path, onto the grass and the bushes, and we reached a
clearing in the wood.
Detail left
Detail right
“We have arrived.” Lyudmyla spoke quietly. Here were
the ponds, two great sandpits filled with an expanse of dark
water and mud and reeds that bent in the wind, a site
marked by a single white stone, erected not by the town in
expression of grief or regret, but as a private act of
remembrance. There we sat, on grass, watching the sun fall
onto dark, still water that stretched tight across the
openings of the earth. Deep down, untouched for half a
century and more, lay the remains of the thirty-five
hundred people of whom the long-forgotten Gerszon Taffet
wrote in the summer of 1946, individuals each, together a
group.
Among the bones that lay beneath was a commingling,
Leon’s uncle Leibus, Lauterpacht’s uncle David, resting
near each other in this place because they happened to be
a member of the wrong group.
The sun warmed the water; the trees lifted me upward
and away from the reeds, toward an indigo sky. Right there,
for a brief moment, I understood.
Acknowledgments
Over the past six years, I have relied on the assistance of
many individuals and institutions from across the world. In
some cases, the assistance was substantial and sustained
over time; in others, the input was informal and limited to
the provision of a single reminiscence or, in one case, the
use of a single word. I am deeply grateful to everyone who
has contributed to a project that grew beyond what I had
expected when I was initially invited to Lviv.
I owe a special debt to members of the families of the
four central characters in this story. My mother, Ruth
Sands, has been extraordinarily and wonderfully supportive
in the face of painful events that cut deep. My aunt, Annie
Buchholz, who was very close to my grandfather over two
decades, was equally generous in the act of recollection.
Other family members—my father, Allan Sands, his
childhood friend Emil Landes, who was my grandfather’s
nephew, and others such as Doron Peleg and Aldo and
Jeannette Naouri—helped add detail to a blurry picture.
The opportunity to spend so many hours with Sir Elihu
Lauterpacht, my teacher and mentor, has been joyous. Saul
Lemkin, the last living family member who knew Rafael,
has been unceasingly generous, as has Niklas Frank, a new
and most unlikely of friends. I am grateful too to Horst von
Wächter for his generosity in making available so much
material and time.
In some respects, it could be said that the city of Lviv is
the fifth main character in the book, or maybe the first. Two
people have served as the most generous of guides to the
city’s secrets, its archives and coffeehouses, and they have
become close friends: at Lviv University, Dr. Ivan Horodyskyy has been miraculous, a smart, savvy, thoughtful
young lawyer of the kind who will surely bring great credit
to the city; Dr. Sofia Dyak, director of Lviv’s Center for
Urban History, has opened up the city’s historical riches
and complexities in a way that is subtle, honest, and
entertaining. Among the others too numerous to mention, I
must single out professors Petro Rabinovich and Oksana
Holovko, who have been supportive throughout; Dr. Ihor
Leman, who was drawn to military service against Russia
even as he completed his own work on Lemkin and
Lauterpacht; Alex Dunai; Professor Zoya Baran; and
Lyudmyla Baybula, the courageous and generous archivist
of Zhovkva, without whom I would never have known about
the borek and its secrets.
Colleagues at University College London—led by my
dean, Professor Hazel Genn, and Professor Cheryl Thomas,
head of research—have been unstintingly supportive of an
overextended writing project, and I have benefited greatly
from the intelligence and labor of a stream of fine, bright
research assistants from UCL: Remi Reichhold, for whom
the idea of the unfindable document is unknown; Mariam
Kizilbash and Luis Viveros, who helped see off the
endnotes; David Schweizer, who assisted with German
culture and language; Daria Zygmunt, who conquered
matters Polish and uncovered the original copy of Wittlin’s
Moy Lwów; and Hejaaz Hizbullah, who found gold in the
League of Nations materials. Elsewhere I have been
assisted by Tessa Barsac (Paris), Noa Amirav (Jerusalem),
Melissa Gohlke and Shaun Lyons (Georgetown), Eric
Sigmund (Syracuse), and Aseem Mehta (Yale).
I have relied on generous assistance across the world. In
France, Lucette Fingercwaig opened a wider and more
personal door to l’Armée du Crime, as Pastor Richard Gelin
opened the archives of the Église Évangélique Baptiste in
the 14th arrondissement. Catherine Trouiller of the
Fondation Charles de Gaulle explained a single photograph
taken in 1944; Danielle Greuillet allowed me access to the
archives of Meudon; and Jean-Michel Petit and Raymond
Bétrémieux educated me on the history of Courrières.
In Poland, Marek Kornat of the Instytut Historii Polskiej
Akademii Nauk told me about Lemkin’s short time at
Kraków’s Jagiellonian University; Dr. Janusz Fiolka offered
endless assistance in and around Kraków; Arkadiusz
Radwan, Jan Fotek, Grzegorz Pizoń, and Aleksandra Polak
of the Instytut Allerhanda offered a direct connection with
the family of Maurycy Allerhand, who taught Lemkin and
Lauterpacht; and Dr. Adam Redzik of Warsaw University is
the foremost historian of Lwów University from the era of
which I write. Ewa Salkiewicz-Munnerlyn provided valuable
insights into the Polish international law community in the
interwar years, and Anna Michta and Joanna WiniewiczWolska were my guides at the Wawel Royal Castle.
Agnieszka Bieńcyk-Missala reviewed parts of the
manuscript, and Antonia Lloyd-Jones offered assistance
with translation from Polish.
In Austria, I lucked out with a genial genealogical private
eye in the person of Mag. Katja-Maria Chladek. Insight and
information were offered by Mag. Margaret Witek, the
current director of the Brigittenauer Gymnasium attended
by my grandfather; Ambassadors Helmut Tichy, Emil Brix,
and Elisabeth Tichy-Fisslberger; and Karin Höfler at the
Third Man Museum. Max Wälde was my University of
Vienna research assistant.
In Germany, too, archival doors were opened with the
help of Dirk Roland Haupt (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) and
Rainer Huhle (Nuremberg Human Rights Center). I came
to know the Nuremberg courtroom with the support of Dr.
Anne Rubesame, Michaela Lissowsky, and Ambassador
Bernd Borchardt (of the International Nuremberg
Principles Academy), and Henrike Zentgraf (of the
Memorium Nuremberg Trials). Dr. Norbert Kampe offered
a personal introduction to the House of the Wannsee
Conference. Knots in my understanding of German were
partly untied with the help of Daniel Alexander, Q.C.,
Professor Josef Bayer (Konstanz University), Sabine Bhose,
David Cornwell, Professor Dr. Klaus von Heusinger
(Cologne), Dr. Geoffrey Plow, and Eddie Reynolds.
As to the trials, I benefited greatly from the firsthand
accounts of Dr. Yves Beigbeder, Lady Enid Dundas,
Benjamin Ferencz, and Siegfried Ramler. The private
papers of Sir Geoffrey Lawrence, diarized by his wife, Lady
Marjorie, were made available to me by Lord and Lady
Oaksey and Patrick Lawrence, Q.C.
In Washington, D.C., I benefited greatly from the
knowledge and experience available at the United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum, not least from Raye Farr,
Anatol Steck, and Leslie Swift. At the U.S. Department of
Justice, Eli M. Rosenbaum and Dr. David Rich, the last Nazi
hunters, found most valuable documentary evidence.
Elsie Tilney became a more distinct and defined
character with the help of Rosamunde Codling of the
Surrey Chapel, who is the model archivist, and Pastor Tom
Chapman. I was greatly assisted on points of detail by
Susan Meister; Chris Hill; Elinor Brecher, the obituarist at
The Miami Herald; Jeanette Winterson and Susie Orbach;
Sylvia Whitman and Germaine Tilney.
The complexities of testing for DNA were explained to me
by Max Blankfeld of Family Tree and Dr. Turi King of the
University of Leicester.
The maps were prepared by Scott Edmonds, Tim
Montenyohl, Alex Tait, and Vickie Taylor of International
Mapping, the sultans of cartography. Photographic
assistance was provided by my dear friend Jonathan Klein,
the master of the pixel, and Matthew Butson, both of Getty
Images, and by Diana Matar, who is able to capture almost
any moment.
The international community of writers, scholars,
librarians, archivists, and museum keepers have offered
great collegiality. My thanks to Elisabeth Åsbrink Jakobsen
(Stockholm); Professor John Q. Barrett (St. John’s
University); John Cooper (London); Professor David Crane
(Syracuse University College of Law); Professor Jonathan
Dembo (J. Y. Joyner Library, East Carolina University);
Michelle Detroit (Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the
American Jewish Archives); Tanya Elder (American Jewish
Historical Society); Kristin Eshelman (Thomas J. Dodd
Research Center, University of Connecticut); Professor
Donna-Lee Frieze (Deakin University); Dr. Joanna Gomula
(Cambridge); Professor John-Paul Himka (University of
Alberta); Dr. Martyn Housden (University of Bradford);
Professor Steven Jacobs (University of Alabama); Valentin
Jeutner (Cambridge); Dr. Yaraslau Kryvoi (University of
West London); Kristen La Follette (Columbia Center for
Oral History); Professor James Loeffler (University of
Virginia); Marguerite Most (Goodson Law Library, Duke
Law School); Nicholas Penny (National Gallery); Dr. Dan
Plesch (SOAS); Professor Dr. Dieter Pohl (University of
Klagenfurt); Dr. Radu Popa (New York University); Andrew
Sanger (Cambridge); Sabrina Sondhi (Arthur W. Diamond
Law Library, Columbia University); Zofia Sulej (William
Cullen Library, University of the Witwatersrand); Francesca
Tramma (Fondazione Corriere della Sera); Dr. Kerstin von
Lingen (University of Heidelberg); Dr. Ana Filipa Vrdoljak
(University of Technology Sydney); Professor Emeritus
Arthur Wensinger (Wesleyan University).
Friends and colleagues, old and new, were supportive and
knowledgeable. Stuart Proffitt helped to set the ball rolling
on the ideas that turned into this book. James Cameron and
Hisham Matar were there, whenever needed. Adriana
Fabra, Sylvia Fano, Amanda Galsworthy, David Kennedy,
Sean Murphy, Bruno Simma, and Gerry Simpson reviewed
draft chapters. Yuval Shany helped to find long-lost
members of my family and a long-forgotten manuscript.
James Crawford helped me to see the wood from the trees
(again). New and obscure insights tumbled from the minds
of David Charap, Finola Dwyer, David Evans, Nick Fraser,
and Amanda Posey even as we laboured on our film, What
Our Fathers Did: A Nazi Legacy. Performances of A Song of
Good and Evil with Laurent Naouri, Guillaume de Chassy,
Vanessa Redgrave, Emma Pallant, Valerie Bezancon, and
Katja Riemann offered unexpected insights. Eva Hoffman
helped to understand the translation of lives and
experiences, while Louis Begley (whose novel Wartime Lies
offered early inspiration), Yves Beigbeder, Robby Dundas,
Michael Katz (introduced to me by Alex Ulam), Clara
Kramer, Siegfried Ramler, Bob Silvers, Nancy (Ackerly)
Steinson, Shula Troman, and Inge Trott were kind enough
to share with me what they had actually lived. Anya
Hurlbert helped arrange a meeting with Cecilia Gallerani,
while Tom Henry suggested useful readings on her long
life; Liz Jobey offered hints on style; Marco De Martino
enriched my knowledge of Curzio Malaparte; Christine
Jennings offered material on long-ago conferences; Sara
Bershtel found linguists; Göran Rosenberg introduced me
to Swedes; Dennis Marks and Sally Groves unpicked
Richard Strauss; and Jonathan Sklar alerted me to the
dangers of a mind on the edge of collapse.
I could not have completed the manuscript without the
careful, scholarly typing of Louise Rands, my colleague and
dear friend over three decades, who also translated a
seemingly endless stream of interviews into intelligible
words of black and white that were capable of being used.
My generous, marvelous, comforting agent Gill Coleridge
devoted more time than was decent to the presentation of
these interweaving stories, before seamlessly passing the
baton to Georgia Garrett, under whose guidance I am now
delighted to be. To both, and to all the fine staff at Rogers,
Coleridge & White, my deepest thanks. These I also hurl
across the Atlantic to Melanie Jackson in New York,
responsible for the instant identification of the one editor
who could get this right. Coincidentally, Melanie has a
familial interest in these pages, as her father and
grandfather both make appearances (allowing me to obtain
a more informed view as to which of two possible meanings
her father intended when he referred to Lemkin as “that
bugger,” in a letter penned in 1947).
Victoria Wilson at Alfred A. Knopf has been the perfect
editor. Fearsome, strategic, attentive, loving, and skeptical,
she endlessly pressed upon me the merits of time and the
slower write, for which I am hugely grateful. Later in the
process of writing, I have been fortunate to work with Bea
Hemming at Weidenfeld & Nicolson, whose insightful and
intelligent thoughts have greatly enhanced the text, even at
a late stage. Such faults as remain are my responsibility
alone.
Finally there are the deepest of all thanks to my closest
family, the core five, now thoroughly (and overly) doused in
the joys and darknesses of Lviv. Leo the historian taught
me about the Pietists; Lara the social scientist reminded
me of my excessive false consciousness; Katya the artist
encouraged me to look at places and things with a different
eye.
And Natalia, the one who makes our little group so
incredibly happy, whilst recognizing and dealing with the
quirks that cause us to be so very different, and who has
borne the brunt of my obsessions. To you, no expression of
gratitude or love could be excessive. Thank you, thank you,
thank you.
Sources
I have drawn upon a wide and varied range of materials.
Some are newly discovered and original—from the archives
of Lviv, touching the lives of Lauterpacht and Lemkin—but
more often I have been able to draw on the work of others,
resources available as a result of prodigious efforts. Such
material is referenced in the endnotes, but among the
many sources a few bear special mention for their interest
and quality.
The material that pertains to the life of my grandfather
Leon Buchholz is largely held in personal, family archives
and in the memories of others, in particular my mother and
aunt. I have benefited from access to the Austrian State
Archives (Österreichisches Staatsarchiv); the Central
Archives of Historical Records in Warsaw (Archiwum
Główne Akt Dawnych); the Documentation Center of
Austrian
Resistance
(Dokumentationsarchiv
des
österreichischen Widerstandes Vienna); the Vienna City
and State Archive (Wiener Stadt- und Landesarchiv); the
Web site of JewishGen; the Yad Vashem Archive, including
the Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names; and the
collections of the United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum.
The city of Lemberg/Lviv/Lwów is the subject of a rich
literature, comprising scholarly material of a historical
nature and personal memoir. As to the scholarly, I have
much appreciated the essays in John Czaplicka’s finely
edited work Lviv: A City in the Crosscurrents of Culture
(Harvard University Press, 2005). With regard to memoir,
the reader will have noted numerous references to Józef
Wittlin’s Moy Lwów (Czytelnik, 1946), which is to be
published for the first time in a fine English translation by
Antonia Lloyd-Jones (City of Lions, Pushkin Press, 2016),
with photographs by Diana Matar. On the events following
the German occupation (1941–44), the work of the historian
Dieter Pohl has been a primary source, including Ivan
Kalyomon, the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police, and Nazi AntiJewish Policy in L’viv, 1941–1944: A Report Prepared for the
Office of Special Investigations, U.S. Department of Justice,
May 31, 2005; and Nationalsozialistische Judenverfolgung
in Ostgalizien 1941–1944, 2nd ed. (Oldenbourg, 1997). I
have been fortunate to rely on Philip Friedman, “The
Destruction of the Jews of Lwów, 1941–1944,” in Roads to
Extinction: Essays on the Holocaust, ed. Ada June Friedman
(Jewish Publication Society of America, 1980), 244–321;
Christoph Mick, “Incompatible Experiences: Poles,
Ukrainians, and Jews in Lviv Under Soviet and German
Occupation, 1939–44,” Journal of Contemporary History 46,
no. 2 (2011): 336–63; Omer Bartov, Erased (Princeton
University Press, 2007); and Ray Brandon and Wendy
Lower, eds., The Shoah in Ukraine: History, Testimony,
Memorialization (Indiana University Press, 2008).
Other memoirs from which I have drawn include Rose
Choron, Family Stories (Joseph Simon/Pangloss Press,
1988); David Kahane, Lvov Ghetto Diary (University of
Massachusetts Press, 1990); Voldymyr Melamed, The Jews
in Lviv (TECOP, 1994); Eliyahu Yones, Smoke in the Sand:
The Jews of Lvov in the War Years, 1939–1944 (Gefen,
2004); Jan Kot, Chestnut Roulette (Mazo, 2008); and Jakob
Weiss, The Lemberg Mosaic (Alderbrook, 2010). The
remarkable cartographic and photographic collection held
by the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe in
Lviv (http://www.lvivcenter.org/en/) is a rich and easily
accessible resource, and much is to be found, with some
digging, in the Government Archive of Lviv Oblast.
The nearby town of Zhovkva/Żółkiew is not the subject of
so abundant a literature, although its long history suggests
that it ought to be. For historical material dating to the
events of the 1930s and 1940s, I have relied on Gerszon
Taffet, The Holocaust of the Jews of Żółkiew (Lodz: Central
Jewish Historical Committee, 1946); Clara Kramer, Clara’s
War: One Girl’s Story of Survival, with Stephen Glantz
(Ecco, 2009); and Omer Bartov, “White Spaces and Black
Holes,” in Brandon and Lower, The Shoah in Ukraine, 340–
42.
Much has been written about the life of Hersch
Lauterpacht. The starting point is the encyclopedic
reference work by his son, Elihu, The Life of Hersch
Lauterpacht (Cambridge University Press, 2010). I have
also benefited from a series of essays published as “The
European Tradition in International Law: Hersch
Lauterpacht,” European Journal of International Law 8, no.
2 (1997). Eli Lauterpacht has provided access to his
father’s personal archive, including notebooks, images,
correspondence, and other documents, not least the
original drafts of the two Nuremberg speeches he wrote for
Sir Hartley Shawcross in 1945 and 1946.
More has been written about Raphael Lemkin and the
word he coined. I have placed particular reliance on
Lemkin’s long unpublished memoir, starting with a copy of
the manuscript available at the New York Public Library,
but have lately been able to rely on the version edited for
publication by Donna-Lee Frieze (Yale University Press,
2013), Totally Unofficial. I have benefited from John
Cooper’s pioneering Raphael Lemkin and the Struggle for
the Genocide Convention (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008),
which was the first full-length biography (recently reissued
in paperback), and have drawn on William Korey’s Epitaph
for Raphael Lemkin (Jacob Blaustein Institute, 2001) and
an excellent collection of essays edited by Agnieszka
Bieńczyk-Missala and Sławomir Dębski, Rafal Lemkin: A
Hero of Humankind (Polish Institute of International
Affairs, 2010). Equally rich is the wonderful article by John
Q. Barrett, “Raphael Lemkin and ‘Genocide’ at Nuremberg,
1945–1946,” in The Genocide Convention Sixty Years After
Its Adoption, ed. Christoph Safferling and Eckart Conze
(Asser, 2010), 35–54. Other sources on which I have relied
include Samantha Power, A Problem from Hell (Harper,
2003), and two works by Steven Leonard Jacobs, Raphael
Lemkin’s Thoughts on Nazi Genocide (Bloch, 2010) and
Lemkin on Genocide (Lexington Books, 2012), and I have
had sight of the manuscript of Douglas Irvin-Erickson,
Raphael Lempkin and Genocide: A Political History of
Genocide in Theory and Law (University of Pennsylvania,
forthcoming), an important contribution. The Lemkin
archive, such as it is, is scattered across the United States,
to be found in the Raphael Lemkin Collection, P-154,
American Jewish Historical Society in New York; the
Raphael Lemkin Papers, MC-60, American Jewish Archives
in Cleveland; the Lemkin Papers, New York Public Library;
the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia
University; and the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center at the
University of Connecticut.
The first account of Hans Frank’s life that I came across,
and the one which left the most vivid impression, is that
written by his son Niklas, originally published in 1987 as
Der Vater (Bertelsmann, 1987) and later translated into
English in an abridged version (too abridged, according to
Niklas) as In the Shadow of the Reich (Alfred A. Knopf,
1991). I have relied on Stanislaw Piotrowski, ed., Hans
Frank’s Diary (PWN, 1961), and, through translated
extracts, the manuscript that Frank wrote in his
Nuremberg prison cell, In the Shadow of the Gallows
(published posthumously by his wife in Munich in 1953 and
available only in German; Piotrowski claims that the
manuscript and typescript authorized by Frank were
changed, with some sentences omitted and others,
“directed against the Polish nation,” inserted [197]). I have
greatly benefited from Martyn Housden’s thorough Hans
Frank: Lebensraum and the Holocaust (Palgrave
Macmillan, 2003); and Dieter Schenk’s Hans Frank: Hitlers
Kronjurist und Generalgouverneur (Fischer, 2006); as well
as Leon Goldensohn, The Nuremberg Interviews:
Conversations with the Defendants and Witnesses (Alfred
A. Knopf, 2004). A detailed account of Frank’s daily life is
to be found in his diaries (Diensttagesbuch), with English
translations of extracts to be found in volume 29 of Trial of
the Major War Criminals Before the International Military
Tribunal.
As to the Nuremberg trial, there can be no substitute for
a close reading of the transcript of the proceedings and the
documentary evidence that was before the judges, which
are available in forty-two volumes of Trial of the Major War
Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal
(Nuremberg,
1947),
available
at
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/subject_menus/imt.asp. I have
made extensive use of Robert H. Jackson’s official Report to
the International Conference on Military Trials (1945); the
Robert H. Jackson Papers at the Library of Congress,
Manuscript Division, Washington, D.C.; and the four large
scrapbooks prepared by Marjorie Lawrence and privately
held by the Lawrence family in Wiltshire.
Several contemporaneous accounts of the trial stand out.
R. W. Cooper’s Nuremberg Trial (Penguin, 1946) is a
personal memoir by the correspondent of the London
Times, almost as gripping as the Nuremberg Diary by the
U.S. Army psychologist Gustave Gilbert (Farrar, Straus,
1947). Other must reads include three articles in The New
Yorker by Janet Flanner, reproduced in Janet Flanner’s
World, ed. Irving Drutman (Secker & Warburg, 1989);
Martha Gellhorn’s essay “The Paths of Glory,” in The Face
of War (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1994); and Rebecca West’s
“Greenhouse with Cyclamens I,” in A Train of Powder (Ivan
R. Dee, 1955). I have also made use of the writings of two
judges: Robert Falco, Juge à Nuremberg (Arbre Bleu,
2012), and Francis Biddle, In Brief Authority (Doubleday,
1962). Telford Taylor offers a rich history in The Anatomy of
the Nuremberg Trials (Alfred A. Knopf, 1993) and is most
usefully supplemented by Ann Tusa and John Tusa’s
Nuremberg Trial (Macmillan, 1983).
Finally, I must make mention of a number of other
academic works: Ana Filipa Vrdoljak’s important article
“Human Rights and Genocide: The Work of Lauterpacht
and Lemkin in Modern International Law,” European
Journal of International Law 20 (2010): 1163–94; William
Schabas’s Genocide in International Law (Cambridge
University Press, 2009); Geoffrey Robertson’s Crimes
Against Humanity (Penguin, 2012); and Gerry Simpson’s
Law, War, and Crime: War Crime Trials and the Reinvention
of International Law (Polity, 2007). As regards my own
writings, I have drawn on two edited works—From
Nuremberg to The Hague (Cambridge University Press,
2003); and Justice for Crimes Against Humanity, with Mark
Lattimer (Hart, 2003)—as well as Lawless World (Penguin,
2006).
Notes
PROLOGUE
An Invitation
“Open, shut, open, shut”: R. W. Cooper, The Nuremberg
Trial (Penguin, 1946), 272.
“This is a happy room”: Niklas and I visited courtroom 600
on October 16, 2014, accompanied by a film crew. The
documentary we made, titled What Our Fathers Did: A
Nazi Legacy, explores a son’s relationship with his
father.
“What haunts are not”: Nicolas Abraham, “Notes on the
Phantom: A Complement to Freud’s Metapsychology”
(1975), in Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok, The Shell
and the Kernel, ed. Nicholas T. Rand (University of
Chicago, 1994), 1:171.
“blurred borders”: Joseph Roth, “Lemberg, die Stadt,” in
Werke, ed. H. Kesten (Berlin, 1976), 3:840, cited in
John Czaplicka, ed., Lviv: A City in the Crosscurrents of
Culture (Harvard University Press, 2005), 89.
“red-white, blue-yellow”: Ibid.
The parliament had disappeared: Jan II Kazimierz Waza,
born March 22, 1609, died December 16, 1672, king of
Poland and grand duke of Lithuania.
“Where are you now”: Mój Lwów (1946); Mein Lemberg
(Suhrkamp, 1994) in German; Mi Lvov (Cosmópolis,
2012) in Spanish.
Six decades later: Ivan Franko, born August 27, 1856, in
Nahuievychi (now the town of Ivan Franko), died May
28, 1916, in Lemberg.
“I do not wish to disturb”: Józef Wittlin, Mój Lwów
(Czytelnik, 1946); translation by Antonia Lloyd-Jones,
City of Lions (Pushkin Press, 2016), 32, is forthcoming.
Page references are to the manuscript of the
translation.
“Let’s play at idylls”: Ibid., 7–8.
“In early August 1942”: David Kahane, Lvov Ghetto Diary
(University of Massachusetts Press, 1990), 57.
PART I
Leon
Georgia, my client: On April 1, 2011, the International
Court of Justice ruled that it did not have jurisdiction to
hear the case.
“soaked up the blood”: Wittlin, City of Lions, 5.
For these efforts: he was imprisoned in 1947, and died in
1950, “Czuruk Bolesław—The Polish Righteous,”,
http://www.sprawiedliwi.org.pl/en/family/580,czurukboleslaw.
“Waffen-SS Galician Division”: Michael Melnyk, To Battle:
The History and Formation of the 14th Galicien WaffenSS Division, 2nd ed. (Helion, 2007).
“Thou Shalt Not Murder”: Andrey Sheptytsky, born July 29,
1865, died November 1, 1944; Philip Friedman, Roads
to Extinction: Essays on the Holocaust, ed. Ada June
Friedman (Jewish Publication Society of America,
1980), 191; John-Paul Himka, “Metropolitan Andrey
Sheptytsky,” in Jews and Ukrainians, ed. Yohanan
Petrovsky-Shtern and Antony Polonsky (Littman Library
of Jewish Civilization, 2014), 337–60.
From the city archives: Government Archive of Lviv Oblast.
Only Leon was born: Central Archives of Historical Records
in Warsaw.
Stanisław Żółkiewski: Born 1547, died 1620.
Alex Dunai gave me: Digital copy on file.
“at the far end”: Joseph Roth, The Wandering Jews, trans.
Michael Hofmann (Granta, 2001), 25.
It lay at the western: Card file of Żółkiew landowners,
1879, Lviv Historical Archives, fond 186, opys 1, file
1132, vol. B.
A peace treaty was signed: Treaty of London, signed May
30, 1913, by Bulgaria, the Ottoman Empire, Serbia,
Greece, Montenegro, Italy, Germany, Russia, and
Austria-Hungary.
Yet just a month later: Treaty of Bucharest, signed Aug. 10,
1913, by Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Greece, and
Montenegro.
“most colossal battle”: “Lemberg Taken, Halicz As Well,”
New York Times, Sept. 5, 1914.
“What was a single murder”: Stefan Zweig, Beware of Pity,
trans. Anthea Bell (Pushkin, 2012), 451.
“no personal files”: Austrian State Archives director to
author, May 13, 2011.
This was a quirk: Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, signed
Sept. 10, 1919, signed by inter alia Austria, the British
Empire, France, Italy, Japan, and the United States.
Article 93 provides the following: “Austria will hand
over without delay to the Allied and Associated
Governments concerned archives, registers, plans, titledeeds and documents of every kind belonging to the
civil, military, financial, judicial or other forms of
administration in the ceded territories.”
“where they all arrived”: Roth, Wandering Jews, 55.
Bruno Kreisky: Born January 22, 1911, died July 29, 1990;
chancellor of Austria, 1970–83.
An obscure treaty signed: See notes to “without distinction
of birth” in Part 2 below.
“aromas of patisseries”: Wittlin, City of Lions, 4, 28.
“no harder lot”: Roth, Wandering Jews, 56–57.
It carried seven Nazi ministers: Neue Freie Presse, May 13,
1933,
1,
http://anno.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/anno?
aid=nfp&datum=19330513&zoom=33.
The Austrian chancellor, Engelbert Dollfuss: Howard
Sachar, The Assassination of Europe, 1918–1942: A
Political History (University of Toronto Press, 2015),
202.
Hitler denounced various agreements: Otto Tolischus,
“Polish Jews Offer Solution of Plight,” New York Times,
Feb. 10, 1937, 6.
The Anschluss (linkup): Guido Enderis, “Reich Is Jubilant,
Anschluss Hinted,” New York Times, March 12, 1938,
4; “Austria Absorbed into German Reich,” New York
Times, March 14, 1938, 1.
“the criminal has been”: Friedrich Reck, Diary of a Man in
Despair, trans. Paul Rubens (New York Review of
Books, 2012), 51.
He stood alongside Arthur Seyss-Inquart: “Hitler’s Talk and
Seyss-Inquart Greeting to Him,” New York Times,
March 16, 1938, 3.
“solution of the Jewish problem”: Doron Rabinovici,
Eichmann’s Jews, trans. Nick Somers (Polity Press,
2011), 51–53.
Another commission oversaw: Curriculum vitae of Otto von
Wächter prepared by Horst von Wächter, on file, entry
for June 11, 1938.
I located the form Leon: The Israelitische Kultusgemeinde
Wien, thought to have been founded in 1852, continues
to function today (http://www.ikg-wien.at).
That night, November 9: Rabinovici, Eichmann’s Jews, 57–
59.
The only trace that remained: Yad Vashem Database (Julius
Landes, born April 12, 1911), based on information
found at the Documentation Centre of Austrian
Resistance.
He’d lost his Polish nationality: Frederick Birchall, “Poland
Repudiates Minorities’ Pact, League Is Shocked,” New
York Times, Sept. 14, 1934, 1; Carole Fink, Defending
the Rights of Others (Cambridge University Press,
2004), 338–41.
They included Spanish Republicans: See generally Jean
Brunon and Georges Manue, Le livre d’or de la Légion
Étrangère, 1831–1955, 2nd ed. (Charles Lavauzelle,
1958).
“air of venality”: Janet Flanner, “Paris, Germany,” New
Yorker, Dec. 7, 1940, in Janet Flanner’s World, ed.
Irving Drutman (Secker & Warburg, 1989), 54.
The division was agreed to: Augur, “Stalin Triumph Seen in
Nazi Pact; Vast Concessions Made by Hitler,” New York
Times, Sept. 15, 1939, 5; Roger Moorhouse, The Devils’
Alliance: Hitler’s Pact with Stalin, 1939–1941 (Basic
Books, 2014).
In June 1941: Robert Kershaw, War Without Garlands:
Operation Barbarossa, 1941/42 (Ian Allan, 2008).
The use of public transportation: Rabinovici, Eichmann’s
Jews, 103.
Deportations to the east: Ibid.
The archivist directed me: On file, available at
http://www.holocaust.cz/databaze-obeti/obet/48808malke-buchholz/.
In October 1941: Rabinovici, Eichmann’s Jews, 104.
“the borders of the German Reich”: Ibid.
We made do with the wall: Third Man Museum,
http://www.3mpc.net/englsamml.htm.
“They are going to take”: Testimony of Anna Ungar (née
Schwarz), deportation from Vienna to Theresienstadt in
October 1942, USC Shoah Foundation Institute,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBFFlD4G3c8.
Escorted to the Aspangbahnhof: Testimony of Henry Starer,
deportation from Vienna to Theresienstadt in
September 1942, USC Shoah Foundation Institute,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvAj3AeKIlc.
It was signed: On file.
Among the 1,985 other people: The details of Malke
Buchholz’s
transport
are
at
http://www.holocaust.cz/hledani/43/?fulltextphrase=Buchholz&cntnt01origreturnid=1; a list of all
names is at http://www.holocaust.cz/transport/25-bqterezin-treblinka/.
The routine that followed: On Franz Stangl, no work is
more engrossing than Gitta Sereny’s Into That
Darkness (Pimlico, 1995); on Treblinka, none more
authentic than the firsthand account by Chil Rajchman,
Treblinka: A Survivor’s Memory, trans. Solon Beinfeld
(MacLehose Press, 2011).
Eventually, the barber cracked: The scene may be viewed
at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXweT1BgQMk.
“I was obsessed”: Claude Lanzmann, The Patagonian Hare,
trans. Frank Wynne (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013),
424.
Malke was murdered: http://www.holocaust.cz/hledani/43/?
fulltext-phrase=Buchholz&cntnt01origreturnid=1.
During one of our conversations: Clara Kramer, Clara’s
War: One Girl’s Story of Survival, with Stephen Glantz
(Ecco, 2009).
They were lined up: Ibid., 124; Gerszon Taffet, The
Holocaust of the Jews of Żółkiew, trans. Piotr
Drozdowski (Central Jewish Historical Committee,
Lodz, 1946).
A year earlier: Maurice Rajsfus, La rafle du Vél d’Hiv (PUF,
2002).
Monsieur Louis Bétrémieux: Telephone conversation
between the author and M. Bétrémieux, Aug. 2, 2012.
The bulk of the papers: The UGIF was established by law
on November 29, 1941, by the Vichy government’s
Office of Jewish Affairs to consolidate all Jewish
organizations in France into a single unit; it was
dissolved by law on August 9, 1944.
In February 1943: Asher Cohen, Persécutions et
sauvetages: Juifs et Français sous l’occupation et sous
Vichy (Cerf, 1993), 403.
Later that summer: Raul Hilberg, La destruction des Juifs
d’Europe (Gallimard Folio, 2006), 1209–10.
It held sheets: The American Joint Distribution Committee
was founded in 1914 and continues to operate today
(http://www.jdc.org); the Mouvement National des
Prisonniers de Guerre et Déportés was created on
March 12, 1944, and headed by François Mitterrand,
fusing
three
preexisting
French
resistance
organizations. See Yves Durand, “Mouvement national
des prisonniers de guerre et déportés,” in Dictionnaire
historique de la Résistance, ed. François Marcot
(Robert Laffont, 2006); the Comité d’Unité et de
Défense des Juifs de France was created toward the
end of 1943 in opposition to the UGIF. See Anne
Grynberg, “Juger l’UGIF (1944–1950)?,” in Terres
promises: Mélanges offerts à André Kaspi, ed. Hélène
Harter et al. (Publications de la Sorbonne, 2009),
509n8.
Many years later: The brasserie, founded in 1927, was a
celebrated meeting place for writers, painters, and
singers, including Picasso, Simone de Beauvoir, and
Jean-Paul Sartre.
“Behind Flouret”: Nancy Mitford, Love in a Cold Climate
(Hamish Hamilton, 1949).
Among those executed: The Franc-Tireurs et Partisans de la
Main d’Œeuvre Immigrée was created in 1941. See
generally Stéphane Courtois, Denis Peschanski, and
Adam Rayski, Le sang de l’étranger: Les immigrés de la
MOI dans la Résistance (Fayard, 1989). The
proceedings against the twenty-three members before
a German military tribunal opened on February 15,
1944, at the Hôtel Continental.
“It is always foreigners”: The front and back of the poster
may
be
seen
at
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affiche_rouge#/media/File:A
ffiche_rouge.jpg.
“Happiness to all”: “Bonheur à tous, Bonheur à ceux qui
vont survivre, Je meurs sans haine en moi pour le
peuple allemand, Adieu la peine et le plaisir, Adieu les
roses, Adieu la vie adieu la lumière et le vent.”
“As long as I”: Max Kupferman to Leon Buchholz, May 9,
1945, on file.
Leon might have known one: Robert Falco, French lawyer,
born February 26, 1882, died January 14, 1960. His
doctoral thesis, completed in 1907, was on “the duties
and rights of theater audiences.”
“If in the future”: Robert Borel, “Le crime de génocide
principe nouveau de droit international,” Le Monde,
Dec. 5, 1945.
PART II
Lauterpacht
“The individual human being”: Hersch Lauterpacht, “The
Law of Nations, the Law of Nature, and the Rights of
Man” (1943), in Problems of Peace and War, ed. British
Institute of International and Comparative Law,
Transactions of the Grotius Society 29 (Oceana
Publications, 1962), 31.
“good judgment”: Elihu Lauterpacht, The Life of Hersch
Lauterpacht (Cambridge University Press, 2010), 272.
A birth certificate: Central Archives of Historical Records,
Warsaw.
A photograph of the family: Elihu Lauterpacht, Life of
Hersch Lauterpacht, opposite 372
Lauterpacht left Żółkiew: Ibid., 19.
That year, the Epsom Derby: “Lemberg’s Derby,” Wanganui
Chronicle, July 14, 1910, 2.
Buffalo Bill Cody: Charles Eldridge Griffen, Four Years in
Europe with Buffalo Bill (University of Nebraska Press,
2010), xviii.
“the appearance of a member”: Wittlin, City of Lions, 32,
26.
“retreating in complete”: “Lemberg Battle Terrific,” New
York Times, Sept. 4, 1914, 3.
“little wayside praying centres”: “Russians Grip Galicia,”
New York Times, Jan. 18, 1915.
“an outburst of wild joy”: “Great Jubilation over Lemberg’s
Fall,” New York Times, June 24, 1915.
“oblivious” to the sounds: Elihu Lauterpacht, Life of Hersch
Lauterpacht, 20.
“phenomenally good ear”: Ibid., 19.
We gathered a near-complete set: Government Archive of
Lviv Oblast, fund 26, list 15, case 171, 206 (1915–16,
winter); case 170 (1915–16, summer); case 172, p. 151
(1916–17, winter); case 173 (1917–18, winter); case
176, p. 706 (1917–18, summer); case 178, p. 254
(1918–19, winter).
Of the early teachers: Manfred Kridl and Olga SchererVirski, A Survey of Polish Literature and Culture
(Columbia University Press, 1956), 3.
the highest mark (“good”): Government Archive of Lviv
Oblast, fund 26, list 15, case 393.
This was in November 1918: Timothy Snyder, The Red
Prince: The Secret Lives of a Habsburg Archduke
(Basic Books, 2010).
opting for neutrality: Fink, Defending the Rights of Others,
110 (and generally 101–130).
“day and night”: Elihu Lauterpacht, Life of Hersch
Lauterpacht, 21.
Within a week: The Treaty of Warsaw (known as the
Petliura-Piłsudski Agreement) was signed on April 21,
1920, but had little impact.
“1,100 Jews Murdered”: “1,100 Jews Murdered in Lemberg
Pogroms,” New York Times, Nov. 30, 1918, 5.
“sit on the same benches”: Elihu Lauterpacht, Life of
Hersch Lauterpacht, 23.
Others wanted greater autonomy: Antony Polonsky, The
Jews in Poland and Russia, Volume 3: 1914–2008
(Littmann, 2012); Yisrael Gutman et al., eds., The Jews
of Poland Between Two World Wars (Brandeis
University Press, 1989); Joshua Shanes, Diaspora
Nationalism and Jewish Identity in Habsburg Galicia
(Camridge, 2014).
The philosopher Martin Buber: Asher Biermann, The
Martin Buber Reader: Essential Writings (Palgrave
Macmillan, 2002).
This was an early fluttering: Elihu Lauterpacht, Life of
Hersch Lauterpacht, 21.
Józef Buzek: Born November 16, 1873, died September 22,
1936.
“Would you not like”: Israel Zangwill, “Holy Wedlock,” in
Ghetto Comedies (William Heinemann, 1907), 313.
“dissolving like jelly”: Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday
(Pushkin, 2009), 316.
“yellow, dangerous eyes”: Ibid., 313.
“autonomous development”: Address to the U.S. Congress,
Jan. 8, 1918; Margaret Macmillan, Paris 1919 (Random
House, 2003), 495.
It was known as the Curzon Line: Elihu Lauterpacht, Life of
Hersch Lauterpacht, 20.
The Curzon Line was drawn: R. F. Leslie and Antony
Polonsky, The History of Poland Since 1863 (Cambridge
University Press, 1983).
“life, liberty, and the pursuit”: “Rights of National
Minorities,” April 1, 1919; Fink, Defending the Rights
of Others, 203–5.
“injustice and oppression”: Fink, Defending the Rights of
Others, 154n136.
As these matters were being debated: Norman Davies,
White Eagle, Red Star: The Polish-Soviet War, 1919–20
(Pimlico, 2003), 47.
“rigid protection”: David Steigerwald, Wilsonian Idealism in
America (Cornell University Press, 1994), 72.
Fearful that Warsaw: A fine account is provided by Fink,
Defending the Rights of Others, 226–31, 237–57.
protect “inhabitants” who differed: Article 93 provided the
following: “Poland accepts and agrees to embody in a
Treaty with the Principal Allied and Associated Powers
such provisions as may be deemed necessary by the
said Powers to protect the interests of inhabitants of
Poland who differ from the majority of the population in
race, language, or religion.”
“without distinction of birth”: Minorities Treaty Between
the Principal Allied Powers and Poland, Versailles, June
28, 1919, Articles 4 and 12, http://ungarischesinstitut.de/dokumente/pdf/19190628-3.pdf.
A few days after signing: Fink, Defending the Rights of
Others, 251.
“Every faction within Poland”: Henry Morgenthau, All in a
Lifetime (Doubleday, 1922), 399.
“exceedingly pretty and modern”: Arthur Goodhart, Poland
and the Minority Races (George Allen & Unwin, 1920),
141.
“unfair to condemn”: Morgenthau, All in a Lifetime, app.
“I was unable to take”: Elihu Lauterpacht, Life of Hersch
Lauterpacht, 16.
“dark, cunning faces”: Karl Emil Franzos, Aus Halb-Asien:
Land und Leute des östlichen Europas, vol. 2 (Berlin,
1901), in Alois Woldan, “The Imagery of Lviv in
Ukrainian, Polish, and Austrian Literature,” in
Czaplicka, Lviv, 85.
Two years later: Bruce Pauley, From Prejudice to
Persecution: A History of Austrian Anti-Semitism
(University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 82.
“If I was able to get out”: Hugo Bettauer, The City Without
Jews (Bloch, 1926), 28.
“every intellectual who wrote”: Pauley, From Prejudice to
Persecution, 104.
He was now enrolled: Elihu Lauterpacht, Life of Hersch
Lauterpacht, 26.
“extraordinary intellectual capacity”: Hans Kelsen, “Tribute
to Sir Hersch Lauterpacht,” ICLQ 10 (1961), reprinted
in European Journal of International Law 8, no. 2
(1997): 309.
The mark surprised Kelsen: Ibid.
In an environment: Norman Lebrecht, Why Mahler? (Faber
& Faber, 2010), 95.
He became president: Elihu Lauterpacht, Life of Hersch
Lauterpacht, 22.
“fallen from heaven”: Arnold McNair, “Tribute to Sir
Hersch Lauterpacht,” ICLQ 10 (1961), reprinted in
European Journal of International Law 8, no. 2 (1997)
311; Paula Hitler, interview on July 12, 1945, at
http://www.oradour.info/appendix/paulahit/paula02.htm
.
“so quiet, so gentle”: Elihu Lauterpacht, Life of Hersch
Lauterpacht, 31.
She said she’d think: Ibid., 32.
At the LSE, he studied: Ibid., 41.
“his real quality”: Ibid., 43.
“At our first meeting”: Macnair, “Tribute to Sir Hersch
Lauterpacht,” 312.
“strong continental accent”: Elihu Lauterpacht, Life of
Hersch Lauterpacht, 330.
“Private Law Sources and Analogies”: Ibid., 44.
“international progress”: Ibid., 55.
“Happily for us”: Ibid., 49.
“be and be seen to be thoroughly British”: Philippe Sands,
“Global Governance and the International Judiciary:
Choosing Our Judges,” Current Legal Problems 56, no.
1 (2003): 493; Elihu Lauterpacht, Life of Hersch
Lauterpacht, 376.
“passion for justice”: Macnair, “Tribute to Sir Hersch
Lauterpacht,” 312.
“not too well at home”: Elihu Lauterpacht, Life of Hersch
Lauterpacht, 40.
“painted nails”: Ibid., 157.
“I can and must have my private harmless life”: Ibid., 36.
“By fighting against the Jews”: Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
(Jaico Impression, 2007), 60.
Poland signed a nonaggression: Antony Alcock, A History of
the Protection of Regional-Cultural Minorities in
Europe (St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 83.
Marriage and sexual relations: Nuremberg Laws
(Nürnberger Gesetze), passed by Reichstag, Sept. 15,
1935; Anthony Platt and Cecilia O’Leary, Bloodlines:
Recovering Hitler’s Nuremberg Laws from Patton’s
Trophy to Public Memorial (Paradigm, 2005).
In 1933, he’d published: Martti Koskenniemi, introduction
to The Function of Law in the International Community,
by Hersch Lauterpacht (repr., Oxford, 2011), xxx.
“The well-being of an individual”: Lassa Oppenheim,
International Law: A Treatise, vol. 2, Disputes, War, and
Neutrality, 6th ed., ed. Hersch Lauterpacht (Longmans,
1944).
“The Persecution of the Jews”: Reprinted in Hersch
Lauterpacht, International Law, vol. 5, Disputes, War,
and Neutrality, Parts IX–XIV (Cambridge University
Press, 2004), 728–36.
To prepare a strong letter: Oscar Janowsky Papers (undated
1900– and 1916–1933), chap. 17, 367 (on file); see
James Loeffler, “Between Zionism and Liberalism:
Oscar Janowsky and Diaspora Nationalism in America,”
AJS Review 34, no. 2 (2010): 289–308.
“I love to see my own work”: Janowsky Papers (undated
1900– and 1916–1933), chap. 17, 389.
Lauterpacht declined to give a legal opinion: Elihu
Lauterpacht, Life of Hersch Lauterpacht, 80–81 (the
request was from Professor Paul Guggenheim).
In late 1937, the boy: Ibid., 82.
Philip Noel-Baker, the director: Ibid., 88.
“My dearest and beloved son”: Ibid., 86.
Tea was served at half past four: Ibid., 424.
Farther along, at No. 13: “The Scenic View,” Times Higher
Education Supplement, May 5, 1995.
No. 23 was occupied by: G. P. Walsh, “Debenham, Frank
(1883–1965),” Australian Dictionary of Biography
(1993), 602.
“flew out of the window”: Elihu Lauterpacht, Life of Hersch
Lauterpacht, 85.
“What private joke causes”: Ibid., 95.
known affectionately as “Lumpersplash”: Ibid., 104.
Lauterpacht accepted a lecture tour: Ibid., 106.
Lauterpacht spent time with British: Ibid., 105.
“Do your best; be modest”: Ibid., 134.
“I’m going to be in Washington”: Lauterpacht to Jackson,
Dec. 1940; Elihu Lauterpacht, Life of Hersch
Lauterpacht, 131–32.
“What is wanted”: Elihu Lauterpacht, Life of Hersch
Lauterpacht, 142.
He got a green light: Ibid., 135.
Jackson introduced some: “An Act to Promote the Defense
of the United States,” Pub.L. 77–11, H.R. 1776, 55 Stat.
31, enacted March 11, 1941.
“extraordinarily significant”: “Text of Jackson Address on
Legal Basis of United States Defense Course,” New
York Times, March 28, 1941, 12, the editorial is at 22.
Willkie never did make good: Elihu Lauterpacht, Life of
Hersch Lauterpacht, 137.
“our dear old ones have aged”: David Lauterpacht to
Hersch Lauterpacht, undated, personal archive of Eli
Lauterpacht.
the “troublesome” but distracting: Elihu Lauterpacht, Life
of Hersch Lauterpacht, 152.
“all the frying oil I wanted”: Ibid., 153.
One letter went to Leonard: Ibid.
Another was sent to Rachel: Ibid., 152.
“in a state of more immediate”: Ibid., 156.
“the will and exertion”: Ibid., 166.
“We heartily greet and kiss”: Aron Lauterpacht to Hersch
Lauterpacht, Jan. 4, 1941, personal archive of Eli
Lauterpacht.
“Write often to my family”: Elihu Lauterpacht, Life of
Hersch Lauterpacht, 152.
“Massacre of the Lwów Professors”: Christoph Mick,
“Incompatible Experiences: Poles, Ukrainians, and Jews
in Lviv Under Soviet and German Occupation,” Journal
of Contemporary History 46, no. 336 (2011): 355;
Dieter Schenk, Der Lemberger Professorenmord und
der Holocaust in Ostgalizien (Dietz, 2007).
“heroic fights against”: Elihu Lauterpacht, Life of Hersch
Lauterpacht, 176.
“international lawlessness”: Ibid., 180 and n43.
“guilty” of and “responsible” for: Punishment for War
Crimes: The Inter-Allied Declaration Signed at St.
James’s Palace, London, Jan. 13, 1942; “Nine
Governments to Avenge Crimes,” New York Times, Jan.
14, 1942, 6 (with text).
The nine governments established: The creation of the
United Nations Commission for the Investigation of War
Crimes was announced on October 17, 1942. Dan
Plesch, “Building on the 1943–48 United Nations War
Crimes Commission,” in War-time Origins and the
Future United Nations, ed. Dan Plesch and Thomas G.
Weiss (Routledge, 2015), 79–98.
Churchill authorized British: David Maxwell Fyfe, Political
Adventure (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1964), 79.
Within months, The New York Times: “Poland Indicts 10 in
400,000 Deaths,” New York Times, Oct. 17, 1942.
“the best instrumentalities”: “State Bar Rallied to Hold
Liberties,” New York Times, Jan. 25, 1942, 12; speech
available
at
http://www.roberthjackson.org/theman/bibliography/our-american-legal-philosophy/.
Not much taken by Bette Davis: Elihu Lauterpacht, Life of
Hersch Lauterpacht, 184.
“Singapore may fall”: “ ‘Pimpernel Smith’ (1941): ‘Mr. V,’ a
British Melodrama with Leslie Howard, Opens at
Rivoli,” New York Times, Feb. 13, 1942.
“I am slightly depressed”: Elihu Lauterpacht, Life of
Hersch Lauterpacht, 183.
“legislation and practices”: Hersch Lauterpacht, ed.,
Annual Digest and Reports of Public International Law
Cases (1938–1940) (Butterworth, 1942), 9:x.
“must be punished”: Jurisdiction over Nationals Abroad
(Germany) Case, Supreme Court of the Reich (in
Criminal Matters), Feb. 23, 1938, in ibid., 9:294, x.
“the ear of the Administration”: Elihu Lauterpacht, Life of
Hersch Lauterpacht, 188.
“the question of so-called”: Ibid., 183.
“Committee on War Crimes”: Ibid., 201.
“much good…for the minorities”: Ibid., 204.
“on the International Bill of Rights”: Ibid., 199.
“revolutionary immensity”: Hersch Lauterpacht, “Law of
Nations, the Law of Nature, and the Rights of Man,”
cited in ibid., 252.
That same day he sent a memorandum: On file.
“I felt I would like”: Elihu Lauterpacht, Life of Hersch
Lauterpacht, 220.
“the triumph of the forces”: Ibid., 234.
“a historic occasion”: Ibid., 229.
This evoked the possibility: Ibid.
“Imagine the study”: Ibid., 227.
“the greatest victim”: Ibid., 247.
It should not be the primary focus: Cambridge Law Journal
9 (1945–46): 140.
Lvov, liberated by the Red Army: Serhii Plokhy, Yalta: The
Price of Peace (Viking, 2010), 168.
“fundamental human rights”: Charter of the United
Nations, San Francisco, June 26, 1945, preamble.
In June, Columbia: Hersch Lauterpacht, An International
Bill of the Rights of Man (Columbia University Press,
1944).
“an echo of the past”: Hans Morgenthau, University of
Chicago Law Review 13 (1945–46): 400.
The two men met: Jackson to Lauterpacht, July 2, 1945,
Hersch Lauterpacht Archive (“I am so grateful to you
for the many courtesies of yesterday and to Mrs.
Lauterpacht for the delightful hour at tea. Your thought
of the junior Jackson was deeply appreciated”).
“stubborn and deep”: Robert H. Jackson’s official Report to
the International Conference on Military Trials (1945),
vi (hereafter cited as Jackson Report).
The Americans wanted: Redrafts of Definition of “Crimes,”
submitted by Soviet Delegation, July 23 and 25, 1945,
and Redraft of Definition of “Crimes,” submitted by
American Delegation, July 25, 1945, in ibid., 327, 373,
374.
On his return to London: Revised British Definition of
“Crimes,” Prepared by British Delegation and Accepted
by the French Delegation, July 28, 1945, in ibid., 390.
“as smooth as a tennis court”: Katherine Fite to her mother,
Aug. 5, 1945, War Crimes File, Katherine Fite Lincoln
Papers, container 1 (Correspondence File), Harry S.
Truman Presidential Museum and Library.
Titles would make it easier: William E. Jackson to Jacob
Robinson, May 31, 1961 (on file); Elihu Lauterpacht,
Life of Hersch Lauterpacht, 272n20.
The term was used: Dan Plesch and Shanti Sattler,
“Changing the Paradigm of International Criminal Law:
Considering the Work of the United Nations War
Crimes Commission of 1943–1948,” International
Community Law Review 15 (2013): 1, esp. at 11 et seq.;
Kerstin von Lingen, “Defining Crimes Against
Humanity: The Contribution of the United Nations War
Crimes Commission to International Criminal Law,
1944–1947,” in Historical Origins of International
Criminal Law: Volume 1, ed. Morten Bergsmo et al.,
FICHL Publication Series 20 (Torkel Opsahl Academic
EPublisher, 2014).
“the most beautiful thing”: Katherine Fite to her mother,
Aug. 5, 1945.
“We should insert words”: “Notes on Proposed Definition of
Crimes” and “Revision of Definition of ‘Crimes,’ ”
submitted by American Delegation, July 31, 1945, in
Jackson Report, 394–95; “I may say that the term was
suggested to me by an eminent scholar of international
law,” ibid., 416.
“the best looking man”: Minutes of Conference Session of
Aug. 2, 1945, Jackson Report, 416.
“murder,
extermination,
enslavement,
deportation”:
Charter of the International Military Tribunal, Jackson
Report, 422.
“outraged conscience of the world”: Elihu Lauterpacht, Life
of Hersch Lauterpacht, 274.
“I shall be in London”: Ibid., 272.
“Daddy does not say much”: Ibid., 266.
This was achieved on October 6: Protocol to Agreement and
Charter, Oct. 6, 1945, Jackson Report, 429.
“We shall just have”: Elihu Lauterpacht, Life of Hersch
Lauterpacht, 275.
PART III
Miss Tilney of Norwich
“became a famous bodybuilder”: Frederick Tilney, Young at
73—and Beyond! (Information Incorporated, 1968).
Frederick, who became a permanent resident of the
United States on June 20, 1920, is commended by
reviewers for his “timeless advice on physical fitness”
and for being “so enthusiastic about fresh vegetable
and fruit juices.”
Among the papers: The archive, located at the William
Cullen Library, University of the Witwatersrand,
Johannesburg, South Africa, includes six letters to and
from Miss Tilney, dating from Aug. 27, 1947, to Oct. 6,
1948,
http://www.historicalpapers.wits.ac.za/inventory.php?
iid=7976.
“Elsie M. Tilney”: On file.
“fearless in pursuing a point”: Robert Govett, born
February 14, 1813, died February 20, 1901; W. J. Dalby,
“Memoir of Robert Govett MA,” attached to a
publication of Govett’s “Galatians,” 1930.
I
came
across
a
copy:
http://www.schoettlepublishing.com/kingdom/govett/sur
reychapel.pdf.
Dr. Codling accompanied: Norfolk Records Office, the
archive is divided into three collections: FC76;
ACC2004/230; and ACC2007/1968. The online catalog
is
available
at
http://nrocat.norfolk.gov.uk/Dserve/dserve.exe?
dsqServer=NCC3CL01&dsqIni=Dserve.ini&dsqApp=Ar
chive&dsqCmd=show.tcl&dsqDb=Catalog&dsqPos=0&
dsqSearch=(CatalogueRef==“FC%2076”).
the “great” welcome she received: North Africa Mission
Newsletter, March/April 1928, 25.
Someone took a group photograph: North Africa Mission
Newsletter, Sept./ Oct. 1929, 80.
“work amongst Jewish people”: Surrey Chapel, Missionary
Prayer Meeting Notes, May 1934.
“a gentleman pulled her”: Surrey Chapel, Missionary
Notes, Oct. 1935.
“exotic loveliness of flowers”: Elsie Tilney, “A Visit to the
Mosque in Paris,” Dawn, Dec. 1936, 561–63.
“I was privileged to help”: Trusting and Toiling, Jan. 15,
1937.
She spoke at meetings: Trusting and Toiling, Sept. 15 and
Oct. 15, 1937.
“Jewish students at Lwów”: Trusting and Toiling, Jan. 16,
1939.
“especially moving, as the largest”: André Thobois, Henri
Vincent (Publications Croire et Servir, 2001), 67,
quoting a firsthand account reported in Le Témoin de la
Vérité, April–May 1939.
“people in difficulty waiting”: Thobois, Henri Vincent, 80.
“her Jewish protégés”: Trusting and Toiling, April 15, 1940.
“whose lot is now more bitter”: Trusting and Toiling, July
15, 1940.
“thinking constantly of family”: Surrey Chapel, note
following prayer meeting, Aug. 6, 1940; Foreign
Mission Band Account (1940); Trusting and Toiling,
Oct. 15, 1940.
“presented his compliments”: Surrey Chapel Foreign
Mission Band Account (1941).
In May, she was transferred: On the Vittel camp, see JeanCamille Bloch, Le Camp de Vittel: 1940–1944 (Les
Dossiers d’Aschkel, undated); Sofka Skipwith, Sofka:
The Autobiography of a Princess (Rupert Hart-Davis,
1968), 233–36; Sofka Zinovieff, Red Princess: A
Revolutionary Life (Granta Books, 2007), 219–61. The
camp at Vittel is also the subject of a documentary film
by Joëlle Novic, Passeports pour Vittel (Injam
Productions, 2007), available on DVD.
“longing for the day”: Surrey Chapel Foreign Mission Band
Account (1942); Trusting and Toiling, March 15, 1943.
Most of the women: Bloch, Le Camp de Vittel, 10 et seq.;
Zinovieff, Red Princess, 250–58; see also Abraham
Shulman, The Case of Hotel Polski (Schocken, 1981).
It was said that they held: Bloch, Le Camp de Vittel, 18, 22,
and nn12–13.
In March, a first group: Ibid., 20.
“The Song of the Slaughtered”: Zinovieff, Red Princess, 251
(“The Song became one of Sofka’s treasured poems,
which she repeatedly copied out and distributed. ‘They
are no more. Do not ask anything, anywhere the world
over. All is empty. They are no more.’ ”) “We felt that
Miss Tilney”: Skipwith, Sofka, 234.
“It was only after the camp”: Ibid.
“always put herself last”: Trusting and Toiling, Dec. 15,
1944, 123.
“outstandingly brave deeds”: Ibid.
“secretary and hostess”: Colonel A. J. Tarr to Miss Tilney,
April 18, 1945; Captain D. B. Fleeman to Miss Tilney,
May 22, 1945.
PART IV
Lemkin
“[A]ttacks upon national, religious and ethnic groups
should be made international crimes…”: Raphael
Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe (Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace, 1944), xiii.
“I know the words”: Nancy (Ackerly) Steinson,
“Remembrances of Dr. Raphael Lemkin” (n.d., on file).
Because he was unable to find a publisher: Raphael
Lemkin, Totally Unofficial, ed. Donna-Lee Frieze (Yale
University Press, 2013), xxvi.
“I was born”: Ibid., 3.
“When the man to the right”: Ibid.
Josef Lemkin circumvented: John Cooper, Raphael Lemkin
and the Struggle for the Genocide Convention
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 6.
To the end of his life: Lemkin, Totally Unofficial, 17.
“Look how evil oppresses mankind”: J. D. Duff, Russian
Lyrics (Cambridge University Press, 1917), 75.
“cloven belly, feather-filled”: Paul R. Mendes-Flohr and
Jehuda Reinharz, The Jew in the Modern World: A
Documentary History (Oxford University Press, 1995),
410.
Lemkin knew the works: Hayyim Bialik and Raphael
Lemkin, Noach i Marynka (1925; Wydawnictwo Snunit,
1986).
“believe an idea means to live it”: Lemkin, Totally
Unofficial, xi.
“More than 1.2 million Armenians”: Ibid., 19.
“the greatest crime of all ages”: Vahakn N. Dadrian, The
History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from
the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus (Berghahn
Books, 2003), 421.
“crimes against Christianity”: Ulrich Trumpener, Germany
and the Ottoman Empire, 1914–1918 (Princeton
University Press, 1968), 201.
“A nation was killed”: Lemkin, Totally Unofficial, 19
After several hours: Government Archive of Lviv Oblast,
fund 26, list 15, case 459, pp. 252-3
A 1924 document: Government Archive of Lviv Oblast, fund
26, list 15, case 459, pp. 252-3.
“very conservative place”: Marek Kornat, “Rafał Lemkin’s
Formative Years and the Beginning of International
Career in Inter-war Poland (1918–1939),” in Rafał
Lemkin: A Hero of Humankind, ed. Agnieszka BieńczykMissala and Sławomir Dębski (Polish Institute of
International Affairs, 2010), 59–74; Professor Kornat to
author, e-mail, Nov. 3, 2011.
He also took a first course: Ludwik Ehrlich, born April 11,
1889, in Ternopil, died October 31, 1968, in Kraków.
“undersized, swarthily pale faced”: “Says Mother’s Ghost
Ordered Him to Kill,” New York Times, June 3, 1921;
“Armenian Acquitted for Killing Talaat,” New York
Times, June 4, 1921, 1.
“I discussed this matter”: Lemkin, Totally Unofficial, 20.
Lemkin returned to the exchange: Herbert Yahraes, “He
Gave a Name to the World’s Most Horrible Crime,”
Collier’s, March 3, 1951, 28.
“lonely, driven, complicated, emotional”: Robert Silvers,
interview with author, Dec. 11, 2011, New York City.
We met on the same day: Altuğ Taner Akçam v. Turkey
(application no. 27520/07), European Court of Human
Rights, judgment of Oct. 25, 2011.
“Murdered in the Janowska camp”: The Janowska camp
was created in October 1941 in a northwestern suburb
of Lemberg, next to a factory operating at 134
Janowska Street. Leon Weliczer Wells, The Janowska
Road (CreateSpace, 2014).
arch-nationalist with “ambivalent” feelings: Roman
Dmowski, born August 9, 1864, died January 2, 1939.
Together we admired: Adam Redzik, Stanisław Starzyński,
1853–1935 (Monografie Instytut Allerhanda, 2012), 54.
Elegant, authoritative, interested: Zoya Baran, “Social and
Political Views of Julius Makarevich,” in Historical
Sights of Galicia, Materials of Fifth Research Local
History Conference, Nov. 12, 2010, Lviv (Ivan Franko
Lviv National University, 2011), 188–98.
He died in 1955: Juliusz Makarewicz, born May 5, 1872,
died April 20, 1955.
“My old home”: Joseph Roth, The Bust of the Emperor, in
Three Novellas (Overlook Press, 2003), 47 at 62.
Around then, he completed: Rafael Lemkin and Tadeusz
Kochanowski, Criminal Code of the Soviet Republics, in
collaboration with Dr. Ludwik Dworzad, Magister
Zdziław Papierkowski, and Dr. Roman Piotrowski,
preface by Dr. Juliusz Makarewicz (Seminarium of
Criminal Law of University of Jan Kasimir in Lwów,
1926).
Schwartzbard’s trial offered: John Cooper, Raphael Lemkin,
16.
“white-bearded Jews”: “Slayer of Petlura Stirs Paris Court”,
New York Times, Oct. 19, 1927; “Paris Jury Acquits
Slayer of Petlura, Crowded Court Receives the Verdict
with Cheers for France,” New York Times, Oct. 27,
1927.
“They could neither acquit”: Lemkin, Totally Unofficial, 21.
“judicial career”: Ibid.
He
published
books
on
the
Soviet:
http://www.preventgenocide.org/lemkin/bibliography.ht
m.
In the spring of 1933: Raphael Lemkin, “Acts Constituting a
General (Transnational) Danger Considered as Offences
Against
the
Law
of
Nations”
(1933),
http://www.preventgenocide.org/lemkin/madrid1933english.htm.
“the life of the peoples”: Vespasian Pella, report to the
Third International Congress of Penal Law, Palermo,
1933, cited in Mark Lewis, The Birth of the New
Justice: The Internationalization of Crime and
Punishment, 1919–1950 (Oxford University Press,
2014), 188, citing Troisième Congrès International de
Droit Pénal, Palerme, 3–8 avril 1933, Actes du Congrès,
737, 918.
The minister of justice: Lemkin, Totally Official, 23.
Although Rappaport is not named, he fits Lemkin’s
description of the caller.
“It is not difficult”: Gazeta Warszawska, Oct. 25, 1933.
As The New York Times: Lemkin, Totally Official, xii.
Lemkin tried to publish: Keith Brown, “The King Is Dead,
Long Live the Balkans! Watching the Marseilles
Murders of 1934” (delivered at the Sixth Annual World
Convention of the Association for the Study of
Nationalities, Columbia University, New York, April 5–7,
2001),
http://watson.brown.edu/files/watson/imce/research/pro
jects/terrorist_transformations/The_King_is_Dead.pdf.
Professor Malcolm McDermott: Lemkin, Totally Unofficial,
155.
Simon told them about: Ibid., 28.
“I do not understand”: Ibid., 54.
I read the poem: By way of interpretation, see Charlton
Payne, “Epic World Citizenship in Goethe’s Hermann
und Dorothea,” Goethe Yearbook 16 (2009): 11–28.
“I will try again”: Lemkin, Totally Unofficial, 64.
“I will be grateful”: Lemkin to Monsieur le Directeur
[identity unknown], Oct. 25, 1939, transcribed copy
provided by Elisabeth Åsbrink Jakobsen.
Such things happen: Lemkin, Totally Unofficial, 65.
Stopping in Riga: Simon Dubnow, History of the Jews in
Russia and Poland: From the Earliest Times Until the
Present Day (Jewish Publication Society of America,
1920).
“the blood red cloth”: Jean Amery, At the Mind’s Limits
(Schocken, 1986), 44.
“irrefutable evidence”: Lemkin, Totally Unofficial, 76.
His acquaintance said yes: John Cooper, Raphael Lemkin,
37.
It was a territory: The decree is in Lemkin, Axis Rule, 506;
Lemkin, Totally Unofficial, 77.
“Decisive steps”: Lemkin, Axis Rule, 524.
For those who remained: Lemkin, Totally Unofficial, 78.
The dining table festooned: Ibid., 82.
Two days later: Ibid., 86.
Disheveled and unkempt: Ibid., 88.
Together the two men fretted: Ibid., 96.
“How was it in Europe”: Ibid.
The porter was taken: Ibid., 100.
A sense of idyll: John Cooper, Raphael Lemkin, 40.
“If women, children”: Lemkin, Totally Unofficial, vii.
Judge Thaddeus Bryson told: Andrzej Tadeusz Bonawentura
Kościuszko, born February 1746, died October 15,
1817, military leader.
There he met with: Lemkin, Totally Unofficial, 106.
One important introduction followed: Ibid., 108.
“be healthy and happy”: Correspondence in Yiddish, May
25, 1941, box 1, folder 4, Raphael Lemkin Collection,
American Jewish Historical Society, New York.
“Keep your chin up”: Lemkin, Totally Unofficial, 111.
“It certainly is important”: Address on the observance of
the golden anniversary of Paderewski’s American
debut, 1941, on Ignacy Jan Paderewski, Victor
Recordings (selections) (1914–1941).
That same month, he traveled: “The Legal Framework of
Totalitarian Control over Foreign Economies” (paper
delivered at the Section of International and
Comparative Law of the American Bar Association, Oct.
1942).
“reign of law”: Robert Jackson, “The Challenge of
International Lawlessness” (address to the American
Bar Association, Indianapolis, Oct. 2, 1941), American
Bar Association Journal 27 (Nov. 1941).
“When I was reading”: “Law and Lawyers in the European
Subjugated Countries” (address to the North Carolina
Bar Association), Proceedings of the 44th Annual
Session of the North Carolina Bar Association, May
1942, 105–17.
Lemkin was not listed: Actes de la 5ème Conférence
Internationale pour l’Unification du Droit Pénal
(Madrid, 1933).
As word spread: Ryszard Szawłowski, “Raphael’s Lemkin’s
Life Journey,” in Bieńczyk-Missala and Dçbski, Hero of
Humankind, 43; box 5, folder 7, MS-60, American
Jewish Historical Society.
Why was the situation: Lemkin, Totally Unofficial, 113.
“a colored man elected”: Norman M. Littell, My Roosevelt
Years (University of Washington Press, 1987), 125.
Lemkin was informed: Lemkin, Totally Unofficial, 235, xiv.
He sent a proposal: John Cooper, Raphael Lemkin, 53.
He declared that: Franklin Roosevelt, Statement on Crimes,
Oct. 7, 1942.
This was based on: Jan Karski, Story of a Secret State: My
Report to the World, updated ed. (Georgetown
University Press, 2014).
“How lucky you are”: Littell, My Roosevelt Years, 151.
He was toying with: Rare Book and Manuscript Library,
Columbia University.
“New conceptions require new terms”: Lemkin, Axis Rule,
79.
The evolution that led: Uwe Backes and Steffen Kailitz,
eds.,
Ideokratien
im
Vergleich:
Legitimation—
Kooptation—Repression (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
2014), 339; Sybille Steinbacher and Fritz Bauer
Institut, Holocaust und Völkermorde: Die Reichweite
des Vergleichs (Campus, 2012), 171; Valentin Jeutner to
author, e-mail, Jan. 8, 2014.
He estimated that nearly: Lemkin, Axis Rule, 89.
“With the establishment”: Proclamation of October 26,
1939, in ibid., 524.
Lemkin spent the first: Georgetown Law School, final
grades, 1944–1945, box 1, folder 13, Lemkin Collection,
American Jewish Historical Society.
“Was it something”: Vasily Grossman, “The Hell of
Treblinka,” in The Road (MacLehose, 2011), 178.
Inaction would cause: “Report to Treasury Secretary on the
Acquiescence of This Government in the Murder of the
Jews” (prepared by Josiah E. Dubois for the Foreign
Funds Control Unit of the U.S. Treasury, Jan. 13, 1944).
Secretary Morgenthau, John Pehle, and Randolph Paul
met with President Roosevelt on January 16, 1944,
presenting him with a draft executive order to establish
a war refugee board tasked with the “immediate rescue
and relief of the Jews of Europe and other victims of
enemy persecution.” Rafael Medoff, Blowing the
Whistle on Genocide: Josiah E. Dubois, Jr., and the
Struggle for a U.S. Response to the Holocaust (Purdue
University, 2009), 40.
The New York Times ran: “U.S. Board Bares Atrocity Details
Told by Witnesses at Polish Camps,” New York Times,
Nov. 26, 1944, 1; “700,000 Reported Slain in 3 Camps,
Americans and Britons Among Gestapo Victims in
Lwow, Says Russian Body,” New York Times, Dec. 24,
1944, 10.
The War Refugee Board: The German Extermination Camps
of Auschwitz and Birkenau, Nov. 1, 1944, American
Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Archive.
“vast majority of the German people”: “Twentieth-Century
Moloch: The Nazi Inspired Totalitarian State, Devourer
of Progress, and of Itself,” New York Times Book
Review, Jan. 21, 1945, 1.
“extremely valuable”: Kohr to Lemkin, 1945, box 1, folder
11, MS-60, American Jewish Archives, Cleveland.
Lemkin contacted Jackson: Lemkin to Jackson, May 4,
1945, box 98, folder 9, Jackson Papers, Manuscript
Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
“put his foot abroad”: Raphael Lemkin, “Genocide: A
Modern Crime,” Free World 9 (1945): 39.
Heading eastward: John Q. Barrett, “Raphael Lemkin and
‘Genocide’ at Nuremberg, 1945–1946,” in The Genocide
Convention Sixty Years After Its Adoption, ed.
Christoph Safferling and Eckart Conze (Asser, 2010),
36n5.
These words alone justified: Lemkin to Jackson, May 4,
1945.
On May 6: Washington Post, May 6, 1945, B4.
Jackson thanked Lemkin: Jackson to Lemkin, May 16, 1945,
Jackson Papers; Barrett, “Raphael Lemkin and
‘Genocide’ at Nuremberg,” 38.
Jackson’s
principal
lawyer:
H.
B.
Phillips,
ed.,
“Reminiscences of Sidney S. Alderman” (Columbia
University Oral History Research Office, 1955), 817;
Barrett,
“Raphael
Lemkin
and
‘Genocide’
at
Nuremberg,” 39.
Two days later: Draft Planning Memorandum of May 14,
1945, box 107, folder 5, Jackson Papers; Barrett,
“Raphael Lemkin and ‘Genocide’ at Nuremberg,” 39.
“destruction of racial minorities”: “Planning Memorandum
Distributed to Delegations at Beginning of London
Conference,” June 1945, in Jackson Report, 68.
Discussing how “genocide”: Barrett, “Raphael Lemkin and
‘Genocide’ at Nuremberg,” 40.
This was a contentious: Ibid., 40–41.
Nevertheless,
the
younger
Jackson:
Phillips,
“Reminiscences of Sidney S. Alderman,” 818; Barrett,
“Raphael Lemkin and ‘Genocide’ at Nuremberg,” 41.
On May 28, Lemkin: Barrett, “Raphael Lemkin and
‘Genocide’ at Nuremberg,” 41.
“top of the refugees”: Phillips, “Reminiscences of Sidney S.
Alderman,” 842, 858; Barrett, “Raphael Lemkin and
‘Genocide’ at Nuremberg,” 41.
“rear echelon Task Force”: Barrett, “Raphael Lemkin and
‘Genocide’ at Nuremberg,” 41, at n. 27.
“bring all war criminals”: “Declaration Regarding the
Defeat of Germany and the Assumption of Supreme
Authority with Respect to Germany,” Berlin, June 5,
1945, Article 11(a) (“The principal Nazi leaders as
specified by the Allied Representatives, and all persons
from time to time named or designated by rank, office
or employment by the Allied Representatives as being
suspected of having committed, ordered or abetted war
or analogous offences, will be apprehended and
surrendered to the Allied Representatives”).
but it appears to: Barrett, “Raphael Lemkin and ‘Genocide’
at Nuremberg,” 42.
“personality difficulties”: Ibid.
Colonel Bernays offered: Ibid.
No one else was: Ibid., 43.
The complaints reached Commander: Ibid., 43–44.
“The sooner Lemkin is out”: Donovan to Taylor,
memorandum, Sept. 24, 1945, box 4, folder 106,
Jackson Papers; Barrett, “Raphael Lemkin and
‘Genocide’ at Nuremberg,” 42.
A persistent “bugger”: William E. Jackson to Robert
Jackson, Aug. 11, 1947, box 2, folder 8, Jackson Papers;
Barrett,
“Raphael
Lemkin
and
‘Genocide’
at
Nuremberg,” 53.
He somehow turned Sidney: On later objections in the
United States, see Samantha Power, A Problem from
Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, rev. ed.
(Flamingo, 2010), 64–70.
The British too were: Telford Taylor, The Anatomy of the
Nuremberg Trials (Alfred A. Knopf, 1993), 103; Barrett,
“Raphael Lemkin and ‘Genocide’ at Nuremberg,” 45.
“couldn’t
understand
what
the
word”:
Phillips,
“Reminiscences of Sidney Alderman,” 818; Barrett,
“Raphael Lemkin and ‘Genocide’ at Nuremberg,” 45.
“extermination of racial and religious”: Indictment, adopted
Oct. 8, 1945, Trial of the Major War Criminals Before
the International Military Tribunal (Nuremberg, 1947),
1: 43.
Years of lugging documents: Note from U.S. Army
Dispensary, Oct. 5, 1945, box 1, folder 13, Lemkin
Collection, American Jewish Historical Society.
“I included genocide”: Lemkin, Totally Unofficial, 68;
Barrett,
“Raphael
Lemkin
and
‘Genocide’
at
Nuremberg,” 46.
PART V
The Man in a Bow Tie
Milein Cosman: Milein Cosman, painter, born 1921, in
Gotha, Germany, arrived in England in 1939.
a distinguished musicologist: Hans Keller, musician and
critic, born March 11, 1919, in Vienna, died November
6, 1985, in London. A personal account of the
Anschluss, and his own arrest, is in Hans Keller, 1975
(1984 Minus 9) (Dennis Dobson, 1977), 38 et seq.
Inge Trott was ninety-one: Inge Trott, social activist, born
1920, in Vienna, died 2014, in London.
It came up instantly: Alfred Seiler, From Hitler’s Death
Camps to Stalin’s Gulags (Lulu, 2010).
“Emil was able to stay”: Ibid., 126.
PART VI
Frank
“Community takes precedence”: Hans Frank, International
Penal Policy (report delivered on Aug. 21, 1935, by the
Reich minister at the plenary session of the Akademie
für Deutsches Recht, at the Eleventh International
Penal and Penitentiary Congress).
As Frank waited: Jackson Report, 18–41.
After his parents separated: Martyn Housden, Hans Frank:
Lebensraum and the Holocaust (Palgrave Macmillan,
2003), 14.
Two years later: Ibid., 23.
Now an insider: Ibid., 36.
Four months after: Neue Freie Presse, May 13, 1933, 1;
“Germans Rebuked Arriving in Vienna,” New York
Times, May 14, 1933.
These specifically targeted: Housden, Hans Frank, 49.
Frank didn’t help with: “Germans Rebuked Arriving in
Vienna.”
“to visit the grave”: “Austrians Rebuff Hitlerite Protest,”
New York Times, May 16, 1933, 1, 8.
“as if it had”: “Turmoil in Vienna as Factions Clash,” New
York Times, May 15, 1933, 1, 8.
A week after Frank’s: “Vienna Jews Fear Spread of
Nazism,” New York Times, May 22, 1933.
A year later, Dollfuss: Howard Sachar, The Assassination of
Europe, 1918–1942: A Political History (University of
Toronto Press, 2014), 208–10.
In August, he presided: Proceedings of the XIth
International Penal and Penitentiary Congress Held in
Berlin, August, 1935, ed. Sir Jan Simon van der Aa
(Bureau of International Penal and Penitentiary
Commission, 1937).
Judge Emil Rappaport: Hans Frank, International Penal
Policy. App. 1 lists the participants.
A few weeks earlier: Henri Donnedieu de Vabres, “La
répression internationale des délits du droit des gens,”
Nouvelle Revue de Droit International Privé 2 (1935) 7
(report presented to the Academy for German Law,
Berlin, Feb. 27, 1935).
“Complete equality”: Reck, Diary of a Man in Despair, 42.
Geoffrey Bing: Geoffrey Bing, “The International Penal and
Penitentiary Congress, Berlin, 1935,” Howard Journal 4
(1935),
195–98;
“Nazis
Annoyed:
Outspoken
Englishman,” Argus (Melbourne), Aug. 23, 1935, 9.
Four years later: Housden, Hans Frank, 78.
“be directed by”: Decree of the Führer and Reich
Chancellor Concerning the Administration of the
Occupied Polish Territories, Oct. 12, 1939, Section 3(2).
In an early interview: Oct. 3, 1939; William Shirer, The Rise
and Fall of the Third Reich (Arrow, 1991), 944.
From December 1, all Jews: Housden, Hans Frank, 126,
citing Frank, Diary, Nov. 10, 1939.
From the start of his reign: Frank, Diary, extracts in Trial of
the Major War Criminals, 29, and Stanisław Piotrowski,
Hans Frank’s Diary (PWN, 1961).
By the time he left: During his trial, Frank referred to fortythree volumes (Trial of the Major War Criminals, 12:7),
but the Polish delegate to the trial, Stanisław
Piotrowski, noted that thirty-eight volumes were
preserved but it was “difficult to determine whether
some of the volumes might not have been lost when the
International Tribunal first went to work in
Nuremberg.” Piotrowski, Hans Frank’s Diary, 11.
“all Jews be evacuated”: Trial of the Major War Criminals,
3:580 (Dec. 14, 1945).
Poles would be treated: Housden, Hans Frank, 119.
“Reich Minister Dr. Frank”: Frank, Diary, Oct. 2, 1940; Trial
of the Major War Criminals, 7:191 (Feb. 8, 1946).
Frank took control: Karl Lasch, born December 29, 1904,
died June 1, 1942.
Held at Wannsee: Frank, Diary, Dec. 16, 1941, sitting of the
cabinet of the General Governments; Trial of the Major
War Criminals, 22:542 (Oct. 1, 1946).
The Wannsee Conference met: Mark Roseman, The Villa,
the Lake, the Meeting: Wannsee and the Final Solution
(Allen Lane, 2002).
The conference minutes were: The minutes are available on
the Web site of the House of the Wannsee Conference,
http://www.ghwk.de/wannsee/dokumente-zur-wannseekonferenz/?lang=gb.
Each time Frank asked a question: Curzio Malaparte,
Kaputt (New York Review of Books, 2005), 78.
The Italian didn’t report: Curzio Malaparte, “Serata a
Varsavia, sorge il Nebenland di Polonia,” Corriere della
Sera, March 22, 1942.
“My one ambition”: Malaparte, Kaputt, 68.
Accused of corruption: Niklas Frank, In the Shadow of the
Reich (Alfred A. Knopf, 1991), 217, 246–47.
“I was surprised”: Malaparte, Kaputt, 153.
In June and July: Housden, Hans Frank, 169–72. The
speeches were given in Berlin (June 9), Vienna (July 1),
Munich (July 20), and Heidelberg (July 21).
The law must be: Niklas Frank, Shadow of the Reich, 219.
“A solemn and transfigured”: Ibid., 208–9.
Mass extermination offered: Ibid., 212–13.
“details later but only”: Ibid., 213.
The Gazeta Lwowska reported: Gazeta Lwowska, Aug. 1,
1942, 2.
Frank’s main task: Dieter Pohl, Nationalsozialistische
Judenverfolgung in Ostgalizien, 1941–1944, 2nd ed.
(Oldenbourg, 1997), 77–78.
“The Higher SS”: Frank, Diary, Conference of the District
Standartenführer of the NSDAP in Kraków, March 18,
1942, in Trial of the Major War Criminals, 29:507.
Schoolchildren lined Opernstrasse: Gazeta Lwowska, Aug.
2/3, 1942, back page.
That evening, Frank inaugurated: Ibid.
“shiver in the ecstasy”: Housden, Hans Frank, 40–41, citing
Niklas Frank, Der Vater (Goldmann, 1993), 42–44.
“We, the Germans”: Gazeta Lwowska, Aug. 2/3, 1942, back
page.
The following morning: Frank, Diary, Aug. 1, 1942,
Documents in Evidence, in Trial of the Major War
Criminals, 29:540–42.
“I came here”: Ibid.
The audience erupted: Ibid.
His decree meant: Decree of Oct. 15, 1941, signed by Hans
Frank, Article 1, para. 4(b) (“Jews who without
permission leave the district to which they have been
confined are subject to punishment by death”).
“Frank came for breakfast”: Diary of Charlotte von
Wächter, Saturday, Aug. 1, 1942, personal archive of
Horst von Wächter.
“Die grosse Aktion”: Dieter Pohl, “Ivan Kalymon, the
Ukrainian Auxiliary Police, and Nazi Anti-Jewish Policy
in L’viv, 1941–1944” (a report prepared for the Office of
Special Investigations, U.S. Department of Justice, May
31,
2005),
92;
Pohl,
Nationalsozialistische
Judenverfolgung in Ostgalizien, 216–23.
“A lot had to be done”: Otto von Wächter to Charlotte, Aug.
16, 1942, personal archive of Horst von Wächter.
Heinrich Himmler arrived: Peter Witte, Der Dienstkalender
Heinrich Himmlers, 1941/42 (Wallstein, 2005), 521
(entry for Monday, Aug. 17, 1942, 18:30 hours).
“One now sees hardly”: Frank, Diary, Aug. 18, 1942.
The
familiar
red
cover:
Karl
Baedeker,
Das
Generalgouvernement: Reisehandbuch (Karl Baedeker,
1943).
Lemberg got eight pages: Ibid., 157–64.
The editors offered: Ibid., 137, 10.
The publication of the Baedeker: “Poland Indicts 10 in
400,000 Deaths.”
One account was written: Simon Wiesenthal, The
Murderers Among Us (Heinemann, 1967), 236–37. (“I
saw him early in 1942 in the ghetto of Lwów. He was
personally in charge on August 15, 1942, when 4,000
elderly people were rounded up in the ghetto and sent
to the railway station. My mother was among them.”)
Later I found: Narodne Archivum Cyfrove (NAC),
http://audiovis.nac.gov.pl/obraz/12757/50b358369d394
8f401ded5bffc36586e/.
The judge ruled: United States v. John Kalymon, a.k.a. Ivan,
Iwan, John Kalymon/Kaylmun, Case No. 04-60003, U.S.
District Court, Eastern District of Michigan, Judge
Marianne O. Battani, Opinion and Order Revoking
Order of Admission to Citizenship and Canceling
Certificate of Naturalization, March 29, 2007. A
deportation order was affirmed by the Board of
Immigration Appeals on September 20, 2011, but
Kalymon died on June 29, 2014, before he could be
deported. See Krishnadev Calamur, “Man Tied to Nazis
Dies in Michigan at Age 93,” NPR, July 9, 2014.
The judgment relies on: Dieter Pohl, “Ivan Kalymon, the
Ukrainian Auxiliary Police, and Nazi Anti-Jewish Policy
in L’viv, 1941–1944” (a report prepared for the Office of
Special Investigations, U.S. Department of Justice, May
31, 2005), 16, 27.
“Deportation of Jews”: Note dated Jan. 10, 1942, regarding
the deportation of the Jews from Lemberg, signed by
Oberst [Colonel] [Alfred] Bisanz.
The second document: Order of March 13, 1942, on the
Labor Deployment of Jews, to enter into force on April
1, 1942.
Damaging as these two: Heinrich Himmler to State
Secretary SS-Gruppenführer Stuckart, Aug. 25, 1942.
“I have the honor”: Frank, Diary, Jan. 25, 1943, Warsaw,
International Military Tribunal, Nazi Conspiracy and
Aggression (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946),
4:916.
“They must go”: Frank, Diary, Dec. 16, 1941; Trial of the
Major War Criminals, 29:503.
In March, the Kraków: Amon Göth, born December 11,
1908, executed September 13, 1946, following trial and
conviction by the Supreme National Tribunal of Poland
in Kraków.
This was implemented: Stoop Report (The Warsaw Ghetto
Is
No
More),
May
1943,
available
at
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/
nowarsaw.html.
“the mass death rate”: Frank, Diary, Aug. 2, 1943, quoted
in Trial of the Major War Criminals, 29:606 (July 29,
1946).
“All the others have”: Ibid.
“We are all”: Frank, Diary, Jan. 25, 1943.
I found the words: Michael Kennedy, Richard Strauss: Man,
Musician, Enigma (Cambridge University Press, 1999),
346–47.
Some pieces went to Germany: Trial of the Major War
Criminals, 4:81 (Dec. 18, 1945).
The picture: The Lady with an Ermine, about 1489–90, a
portrait of Cecilia Gallerani (1473–1536), mistress of
Ludovico Sforza. The ermine is a symbol of purity, and
Leonardo is said to have believed such a painting,
which is now the property of the Czartoryski
Foundation, could commemorate and inspire love.
“a race which must”: Frank, Diary, March 18, 1944,
Reichshof; Trial of the Major War Criminals, 7:469
(Feb. 15, 1946).
Frank retaliated: Housden, Hans Frank, 209; Frank, Diary,
July 11, 1944.
On July 27, Lemberg fell: Timothy Snyder, The
Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania,
Belarus, 1569–1999 (Yale University Press, 2003), 177.
On August 1, an uprising: Norman Davies, Rising ’44: The
Battle for Warsaw (Macmillan, 2003).
His diary recorded: Frank, Diary, Sept. 15, 1944
(conversation with Dr. Bühler).
He watched films: Die Stadt ohne Juden (1924, dir. Hans
Karl Breslauer). Hans Moser played the character of
Rat Bernart.
It was only a short trip: Housden, Hans Frank, 218.
He set up office: Ibid., 218; Frank, Diary, Feb. 2, 1945.
Two days later: Niklas Frank, Shadow of the Reich, 317.
This was the same Frank: Article 175a was adopted on June
28, 1935, adding the crime of severe lewdness
(schwere Unzucht) and redefining the crime as a felony.
See generally Burkhard Jellonnek, Homosexuelle unter
dem Hakenkreuz: Die Verfolgung von Homosexuellen
im Dritten Reich (F. Schöningh, 1990). Frank had
warned that the “epidemic of homosexuality” was
threatening the new Reich. Richard Plant, The Pink
Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals (Henry
Holt, 1988), 26.
A vehicle pulled up: Housden, Hans Frank, 218.
In June, Frank’s name: The first meeting of British and
American delegates, on June 21, 1945, received a first
list of ten possible defendants put forward by David
Maxwell Fyfe, selected on the basis that their names
were well-known to the public. Taylor, Anatomy of the
Nuremberg Trials, 85–86.
The inclusion of the “Butcher of Warsaw”: Ibid., 89.
There he was interrogated: Ann Tusa and John Tusa, The
Nuremberg Trial (Macmillan, 1983), 43–48.
Robert Ley: John Kenneth Galbraith, “The ‘Cure’ at
Mondorf Spa,” Life, Oct. 22, 1945, 17–24.
“unbelievably difficult”: Hans Frank, conversation with a
U.S.
Army
officer,
Aug.
4–5,
1945,
http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/trials/HansFra
nkTestimony.html.
At the end of the month: On August 29, 1945, the chief
prosecutors announced a “first list of war criminals to
be tried before the International Military Tribunal.”
Taylor, Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials, 89 (twentyfour defendants were on the first list).
A few days later: Interrogation testimony of Hans Frank,
taken at Nuremberg, Sept. 1, 6, 7, 10, 13, and Oct. 3, 8,
1945
(by
Colonel
Thomas
A.
Hinkel),
http://library2.lawschool.cornell.edu/donovan/show.asp
?query=Hans+Frank.
PART VIII
Nuremberg
Ley had killed himself: Taylor, Anatomy of the Nuremberg
Trials, 132, 165.
“The Tribunal will now enter”: Ibid., 143; Tusa and Tusa,
Nuremberg Trial, 109–10.
The man in charge: Trial of the Major War Criminals, 1: 1
(“Members and alternate members of the Tribunal”).
On the far left: Francis Biddle, In Brief Authority
(Doubleday, 1962; Praeger, 1976), 381. 271 Then John
Parker: Ibid., 372–73.
The French were seated: Tusa and Tusa, Nuremberg Trial,
111; Guillaume Mouralis, introduction to Juge à
Nuremberg, by Robert Falco (Arbre Bleu, 2012), 13 (at
note 2), 126–27.
“unique in the history”: Trial of the Major War Criminals,
2:30.
Between September 7, 1941: Ibid., 64.
The former governor-general would have known: Taylor,
Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials, 132.
“authorized, directed, and participated”: Trial of the Major
War Criminals, 2:75.
“It was an unforgettable”: Elihu Lauterpacht, Life of
Hersch Lauterpacht, 277.
“great satisfaction”: Ibid.
All that remained: Illustrated London News, Dec. 8, 1945.
“Tell me, Rosenberg”: Gustave Gilbert, Nuremberg Diary
(New York: Farrar, Straus, 1947), 42.
“small cheap face”: Martha Gellhorn, “The Paths of Glory,”
in The Face of War (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1994), 203.
“I declare myself”: Trial of the Major War Criminals, 2:97.
“The privilege of opening”: Ibid., 98.
“That four great nations”: Ibid., 99.
“a race which has”: Ibid., 120.
“leave to live”: Rudyard Kipling, “The Old Issue,” in
Collected Poems of Rudyard Kipling (Wordsworth
Poetry Library, 1994), 307–9.
“great personal triumph”: Elihu Lauterpacht, Life of Hersch
Lauterpacht, 277.
Such personal concerns: Ibid., 276.
I was able to read: On file.
“The community of nations”: Hersch Lauterpacht, “Draft
Nuremberg
Speeches,”
Cambridge
Journal
of
International and Comparative Law 1, no. 1 (2012): 48–
49.
He allowed himself: Elihu Lauterpacht, Life of Hersch
Lauterpacht, 276.
Shawcross’s legal arguments: Ibid.
“You spoke with conviction”: Ibid., 278.
A force of personality: Gilbert, Nuremberg Diary, 66; see
also John J. Michalczyk, Filming the End of the
Holocaust: Allied Documentaries, Nuremberg, and the
Liberation of the Concentration Camps (Bloomsbury,
2014), 96.
“to texts read aloud”: Janet Flanner, “Letter from
Nuremberg,” New Yorker, Jan. 5, 1946, in Drutman,
Janet Flanner’s World, 46–48.
“strained attentiveness”: Janet Flanner, “Letter from
Nuremberg,” New Yorker, Dec. 17, 1945, in Drutman,
Janet Flanner’s World, 99.
Visitors were attracted by: Ibid., 98.
The widow of a Battle of Britain hero: Sir Hugh Dundas,
born July 22, 1920, died July 10, 1995.
the American judge who: Biddle, In Brief Authority.
the French judge who: Falco, Juge à Nuremberg.
“The British papers published”: David Low, “Low’s
Nuremberg Sketchbook No. 3,” Evening Standard, Dec.
14,
1945,
available
at
http://www.cartoons.ac.uk/record/LSE1319.
“That we sentence 1,200,000”: Trial of the Major War
Criminals, 3:551.
In due course, the matter: Tusa and Tusa, Nuremberg Trial,
294.
“I am a judge”: Donnedieu to Lemkin, Dec. 28, 1945, box 1,
folder 18, Lemkin Collection, American Jewish
Historical Society.
Rappaport survived the war: Law Reports of Trials of War
Criminals, Selected and Prepared by the UN War
Crimes
Commission,
vols.
7,
14,
http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/law-reportstrials-war-criminals.html.
He shared vivid dreams: Gilbert, Nuremberg Diary, 22.
Gilbert was not averse: Taylor, Anatomy of the Nuremberg
Trials, 548.
“I listened to”: Gilbert, Nuremberg Diary, 81–82 (Dec. 22,
1945).
“It is as though I am”: Ibid., 116 (Jan. 10, 1946).
“returned from the other world”: Trial of the Major War
Criminals, 8:322.
He saw Commander Kurt: Ibid., 328.
Professor Redzik who gave me: Redzik, Stanislaw
Starzynski, 55.
“We tread the earth”: Grossman, Road, 174.
The diaries had been used: Flanner, “Letter from
Nuremberg,” Dec. 17, 1945, 107.
He followed Alfred Rosenberg: Trial of the Major War
Criminals, 11:553.
“at least 2,500,000 victims”: Ibid., 415.
“never even occurred to us”: Gilbert, Nuremberg Diary,
259.
Dr. Seidl asked a few questions: Trial of the Major War
Criminals, 12:2–3.
“I am possessed”: Ibid., 7–8.
One step forward: Ibid., 19, 13.
“A thousand years will pass”: Ibid.
“Did you hear him say”: Gilbert, Nuremberg Diary, 277.
“I am glad”: Ibid.
Other defendants were contemptuous: Ibid., 277–83.
“I did not collect”: Trial of the Major War Criminals, 12:14,
40.
Frank’s approach generated: Yves Beigbeder, conversation
with author, June 29, 2012.
“unexpected acknowledgment”: Yves Beigbeder, “Le procès
de Nurembourg: Frank plaide coupable,” Réforme, May
25, 1946.
Later I sent a copy: Hans Frank, International Penal Policy.
“A Nazi Judge on the Nuremberg Tribunal”: Falco, Juge à
Nuremberg, 42.
“He has become a Catholic”: Christopher Dodd, Letters
from Nuremberg: My Father’s Narrative of a Quest for
Justice (Broadway Books 2008), 289.
“A few days ago”: Gilbert, Nuremberg Diary, 280.
PART IX
The Girl Who Chose to Forget
There they remained: Gabrielle Anderl and Walter
Manoschek,
Gescheiterte
Flucht:
Der
jüdische
“Kladovo-Transport” auf dem Weg nach Palästina,
1939–42 (Failed flight: The Jewish ‘Kladovo transport’
on the way to Palestine, 1939–42) (Verlag für
Gesellschaftskritik, 1993). See also “The Darien Story,”
The
Darien
Dilemma,
http://www.dariendilemma.com/eng/story/darienstory/;
Dalia Ofer and Hannah Weiner, Dead-End Journey
(University Press of America, 1996).
PART X
Judgment
“I should in any event”: Elihu Lauterpacht, Life of Hersch
Lauterpacht, 293.
“Sound realism”: Ibid., 285–86; Hersch Lauterpacht, “The
Grotian Tradition in International Law,” British Year
Book of International Law 23 (1946): 1–53.
“cry out awfully”: Elihu Lauterpacht, Life of Hersch
Lauterpacht, 278.
“We know about you”: Lauterpacht to Inka Gelbard, May
27, 1946, personal archive of Eli Lauterpacht.
“the main feature”: Elihu Lauterpacht, Life of Hersch
Lauterpacht, 294.
“like a bad Hollywood script”: Steven Jacobs, ed., Raphael
Lemkin’s Thoughts on Nazi Genocide (Bloch, 2010),
261.
So much so: G. Reynolds, “Cosmopolites Clock the
American Femme; Nice, but Too Honest to Be Alluring,”
Washington Post, March 10, 1946, S4.
None were obviously addressed: Copies provided by Nancy
(Ackerly) Steinson.
“the needs of under-privileged”: Lemkin to Eleanor
Roosevelt, May 18, 1946, box 1, folder 13, 5–6, Raphael
Lemkin Papers, American Jewish Archives.
A similar letter went: Lemkin to McCormick, May 19, 1946,
box 1, folder 13, 7–9, Lemkin Papers, American Jewish
Archives.
“I missed both of you”: Lemkin to Pinchot, May 20, 1946,
box 1, folder 13, 15–16, Lemkin Papers, American
Jewish Archives.
“The sudden call”: Lemkin to Durward V. Sandifer, May 20,
1946, box 1, folder 13, 13–14, Lemkin Papers, American
Jewish Archives.
He left for Europe: Identification card issued by the War
Department, May 22, 1946, box 1, folder 12, Lemkin
Collection, American Jewish Historical Society; Peter
Balakian, “Raphael Lemkin, Cultural Destruction, and
the Armenian Genocide,” Holocaust and Genocide
Studies 27, no. 1 (2013): 74.
There he met Egon: Schwelb to Lemkin, June 24, 1946,
Rafael Lemkin Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript
Library, Columbia University.
He’d already sent 800,000: Trial of the Major War
Criminals, 15:164.
More than twenty-five thousand: Barrett, “Raphael Lemkin
and ‘Genocide’ at Nuremberg,” 48.
Not formally a member: Lemkin, Totally Unofficial, 235.
“convict these guys”: Power, Problem from Hell, 50.
as a poste restante: Rafael Lemkin Papers, Rare Book and
Manuscript Library, Columbia University.
“if the people doomed”: Ibid.
“that the prosecution did not”: “The significance of the
concept of genocide in the trial of war criminals,”
Thomas Dodd Papers, Box/Folder 387:8580, Thomas J.
Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut.
Lemkin met again: Barrett, “Raphael Lemkin and
‘Genocide’ at Nuremberg,” 47–48.
It happened on June 25: Ibid., 48–49.
“What you wanted to do”: Trial of the Major War Criminals,
17:61.
“very warm appreciation”: John Cooper, Raphael Lemkin,
70.
Cooper noted that: R. W. Cooper, Nuremberg Trial, 109.
“was recalled to Poland”: Ibid., 110.
“a most valuable precedent”: Lauterpacht, “Draft
Nuremberg Speeches,” 68.
“the rights of man”: Ibid., 87.
“for no other reason”: Ibid., 74.
Frank was a “direct agent”: Ibid., 76.
“Witness…defendant Frank”: Ibid., 110.
“I am naturally inclined”: Elihu Lauterpacht, Life of Hersch
Lauterpacht, 295.
On July 10, Lauterpacht’s secretary: Ibid.
Dr. Alfred Thoma sought: Trial of the Major War Criminals,
18:90, 92–94.
The unexpected argument: Ibid., 112–13.
Rosenberg was aggrieved: Ibid., 114–28.
“Presented with all due respect”: Lemkin Papers, Rare
Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.
He spent a few days: Office of the Registrar 385th Station
Hospital APO 124, U.S. Army, Abstract Record of
Hospitalization of Raphael Lemkin, box 5, folder 7, 23,
Lemkin Papers, American Jewish Archives.
It didn’t help: Trial of the Major War Criminals, 17:550–55.
“With one exception”: Ibid., 18:140.
“5 year struggle”: Ibid., 160.
As an occupying power: Ibid.
“completely irrelevant”: Ibid., 152.
The Americans first: Ibid., 19:397–432.
Then the British: Ibid., 433–529.
Then the French: Ibid., 530–618; ibid., vol. 20, 1-14.
Robert Jackson opened: Ibid., 19:397.
“a thousand years will pass”: Ibid., 406.
He addressed the facts: Ibid., 433–529.
“We are very apprehensive”: Elihu Lauterpacht, Life of
Hersch Lauterpacht, 295.
“If I fail to”: Ibid., 296.
Shawcross started with: Trial of the Major War Criminals,
19:437–57.
“Without screaming or weeping”: Ibid., 507.
A moment of “living pity”: Rebecca West, “Greenhouse with
Cyclamens I,” in A Train of Powder (Ivan R. Dee, 1955),
20.
Shawcross turned his attention: Trial of the Major War
Criminals, 19:446.
“That damn Englishman”: Housden, Hans Frank, 231.
“Genocide” applied to gypsies: Trial of the Major War
Criminals, 19:497.
“International law has in the past”: Ibid., 471–72.
“The individual must transcend”: Ibid., 529.
“ultimate unit of all law”: Ibid., 472.
Shawcross was followed by: Ibid., 530–35.
Genocide “was almost totally”: Ibid., 550.
“Not one of the defendants”: Ibid., 562.
He had no time: Ibid., 570.
“How vain”: Ibid.
It contained the photocopied: Taffet, Holocaust of the Jews
of Żółkiew.
“Once they were stripped”: Ibid., 58.
“Dr. Henryk Lauterpacht”: Ibid., 8.
Among Lemkin’s papers: Lemkin Papers, Rare Book and
Manuscript Library, Columbia University.
Three hundred international lawyers: International Law
Association, Report of the Forty-First Conference,
Cambridge (1946), xxxvii–xliv.
He collapsed after his flight: Note on Raphael Lemkin
(undated, prepared with input from Lemkin), box 5,
folder 7, MS-60, American Jewish Archives, Cleveland.
This
was
British
pragmatism:
International
Law
Association, Report of the Forty-First Conference, 8–13.
“the criminal philosophy of genocide”: Ibid., 25–28.
“We cannot keep telling”: Barrett, “Raphael Lemkin and
‘Genocide’ at Nuremberg,” 51.
“I think I succeeded”: John Cooper, Raphael Lemkin, 73.
“distinct technique”: “Genocide,” New York Times, Aug. 26,
1946, 17.
“hurt surprise that the prosecution”: Gilbert, Nuremberg
Diary, 417.
“awful crime of genocide”: Trial of the Major War
Criminals, 22:229.
Despite Jackson’s press release: Ibid., 271–97.
The French, by contrast: Ibid., 300.
The Soviet prosecutor Rudenko: Ibid., 321.
Göring spoke first: Ibid., 366–68.
“would act just as”: Ibid., 373.
Ribbentrop, Keitel: Ibid., 382.
“more and more deeply involved”: Ibid., 384.
“Every possible guilt incurred”: Ibid., 385.
“Who shall ever judge”: Ibid.
When their visas ran out: Conversation with Saul Lemkin.
“if one emphasises”: Schwelb to Humphrey, June 19, 1946,
PAG-3/1.3, box 26, United Nations War Crimes
Commission, 1943–1949, Predecessor Archives Group,
United Nations Archives, New York; cited in Ana Filipa
Vrdoljak, “Human Rights and Genocide: The Work of
Lauterpacht and Lemkin in Modern International Law,”
European Journal of International Law 20, no. 4 (2010):
1184n156.
“I like this”: Gaston Oulmàn, born Walter Ullmann, January
5, 1898, died May 5, 1949, broadcaster and journalist;
see Maximilian Alexander, Das Chamäleon (R. Glöss,
1978).
Khaki Roberts was with them: Taylor, Anatomy of the
Nuremberg Trials, 103.
Lemkin was in Paris: John Cooper, Raphael Lemkin, 73.
The first day: Trial of the Major War Criminals, 22:411–523.
“transcend the national obligations”: Ibid., 466.
The Soviet judge said: Ibid., 497.
We were powerless: Ibid., 498.
“two thousand wretched”: West, “Greenhouse with
Cyclamens I,” 53–54.
“recalled the madam”: Ibid., 6, 58–59.
Judge Nikitchenko convicted Rosenberg: Trial of the Major
War Criminals, 22:541.
embroiled in a messy affair: Lorna Gibb, West’s World
(Macmillan, 2013), 178.
Biddle turned to count three: Trial of the Major War
Criminals, 22:542–44.
“It…may well be true”: Ibid.
three were acquitted: Ibid., 574, 584.
Of the first six: Ibid., 588–89.
Rebecca West noticed the moment: West, “Greenhouse with
Cyclamens I,” 59.
“Tode durch den Strang”: John Cooper, Raphael Lemkin,
272.
Judge Biddle was surprised: David Irving, Nuremberg: The
Last Battle (1996, Focal Point), 380 (citing “Notes on
Judgement—Meetings of Tribunal,” Final Vote on
Individuals, Sept. 10, 1946, University of Syracuse,
George Arents Research Library, Francis Biddle
Collection, box 14).
“I deserved it”: Gilbert, Nuremberg Diary, 432.
“I hope you will always”: Elihu Lauterpacht, Life of Hersch
Lauterpacht, 297.
Nuremberg nightmare: Letter from Lemkin to Anne O’Hare
McCormick, May 19, 1946, box 1, folder 13, Lemkin
Papers, American Jewish Archives.
“the blackest day”: William Schabas, “Raphael Lemkin,
Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity,” in BiénczykMissala and Dębski, Hero of Humankind, 233.
The pope made a plea: “Pope Asks Mercy for Nazi,
Intercedes for Hans Frank,” New York Times, Oct. 6,
1946.
“the strengthening of international law”: Truman to
Lawrence, Oct. 12, 1946, Lawrence family album, on
file.
“Göring is executed first”: Lawrence family album.
He said a few final words: Kingsbury Smith, “The Execution
of Nazi War Criminals,” International News Service,
Oct. 16, 1946.
“Ça, c’est beau”: John Cooper, Raphael Lemkin, 301.
EPILOGUE
To the Woods
Desiring to lay the path: UN General Assembly resolution
95 (“Affirmation of the Principles of International Law
Recognized by the Charter of the Nürnberg Tribunal”),
adopted at the fifty-fifth plenary meeting, Dec. 11,
1946.
The General Assembly then adopted: UN General Assembly
resolution 96 (“The Crime of Genocide”), adopted at the
fifty-fifth plenary meeting, Dec. 11, 1946.
On December 9, 1948: Convention on the Prevention and
Punishment of Genocide, adopted by the UN General
Assembly, Dec. 9, 1948, in force Jan. 12, 1951.
This came with agreement: Convention for the Protection
of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, Nov. 4,
1950, 213 United Nations Treaty Series 221.
That summer, more than 150 states: Rome Statute of the
International Criminal Court, July 17, 1998, 2187
United Nations Treaty Series 90.
Two months after agreement: Prosecutor v. Jean-Paul
Akayesu, Case No. ICTR-96-4-T, Trial Chamber
Judgment (Sept. 2, 1998).
A few weeks later: R v. Bow Street Metropolitan
Stipendiary Magistrate, Ex Parte Pinochet Ugarte (No.
3) [1999] 2 All ER 97.
In May 1999: Prosecutor v. Slobodan Milosevic et al., Case
No. IT-99-37, Indictment (ICTY, May 22, 1999).
In November 2001: Prosecutor v. Slobodan Milosevic, Case
No. IT-01-51-I, Indictment (ICTY, Nov. 22, 2001).
In March 2007: United States v. John Kalymon, Opinion and
Order, March 29, 2007.
In September 2007: Case Concerning Application of the
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the
Crime of Genocide (Bosnia Herzegovina v. Serbia and
Montenegro) Judgment, ICJ Reports (2007), paras. 413–
15, 471(5).
In July 2010: Prosecutor v. Omar Hassan Ahmad Al Bashir,
ICC-02/05-01/09, Second Warrant of Arrest (Pre-trial
Chamber I, July 12, 2010).
Two years later: Prosecutor v. Charles Ghankay Taylor,
SCSL-03-01-T, Trial Judgment (Trial Chamber II, May
18, 2012).
He was sentenced to fifty: Prosecutor v. Charles Ghankay
Taylor, SCSL-03-01-T, Sentencing Judgment (Trial
Chamber II, May 30, 2012), 40.
In 2015, the United Nations: Professor Sean Murphy, “First
Report of the Special Rapporteur on Crimes Against
Humanity” (February 17, 2015), UN International Law
Commission,
A/CN.4/680;
also
Crimes
Against
Humanity Initiative, Whitney R. Harris World Law
Institute, Washington University in St. Louis School of
Law,
http://law.wustl.edu/harris/crimesagainsthumanity.
“crime of crimes”: David Luban, “Arendt on the Crime of
Crimes,”
Ratio
Juris
(2015)
(forthcoming),
ssrn.com/abstract=2588537.
there emerged a race: Elissa Helms, “ ‘Bosnian Girl’:
Nationalism and Innocence Through Images of
Women,” in Retracing Images: Visual Culture After
Yugoslavia, ed. Daniel Šuber and Slobodan Karamanić
(Brill, 2012), 198.
“an essential component”: Christian Axboe Nielsen,
“Surmounting the Myopic Focus on Genocide: The Case
of the War in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Journal of
Genocide Research 15, no. 1 (2013): 21–39.
without contributing to the resolution: Timothy Snyder,
Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (Basic
Books, 2010), 405, 412–13.
“stirs up national outrage”: “Turks and Armenians in
Shadow of Genocide,” Financial Times, April 24, 2015.
“the individual, when he comes”: Louis Gumplowicz, La
lutte des races (Guillaumin, 1893), 360.
“Our bloody nature”: Edward O. Wilson, The Social
Conquest of Earth (Liveright, 2012), 62.
He died there: Request for Delivery of Dr. Gustav Waechter
for Trial for a War Crime, Wiesbaden, September 28,
1946: “Subject is responsible for mass-murder
(shooting and executions). Under his command as
Governor of District-Galicia, more than 100 thousand
Polish citizens lost their life.” Wächter was listed as a
war criminal on the UN CROWCASS list, file no. 78416,
449, File Bd. 176, in the collection of the Institute of
National
Remembrance
(Warsaw),
available
at
USHMM, RG-15.155M (Records of investigation and
documentation of the main Commission to Investigate
Nazi Crimes in Poland, Investigation against Dr. OTTO,
WAECHTER Gustaw, Gauleiter of the Kraków district,
then the district of Galizien, accused of giving orders of
mass executions and actions directed against the
Jewish people).
His son Horst lives: See Diana Błońska, “O Muzeum
Narodowym w Krakowiew czasie drugiej wojny
światowej, 28 Klio” Czasopismo poświęcone dziejom
Polski i powszechnym (2014), 85, 119 at note 82. (“The
Museum suffered major, irretrievable losses at the
hands of the wife of the governor of the Kraków
Distrikt, Frau Wächter, a Viennese woman aged about
35, with chestnut brown hair. She looted every
department of the Museum to decorate the Pod
Baranami palace, which was the Distrikt headquarters,
taking the most exquisite paintings and the most
beautiful items of antique furniture, militaria etc.,
despite the fact that the Director of the Museum
warned her against taking masterpieces for this
purpose. Items that went missing included paintings
such as: Breughel’s The Fight Between Lent and
Carnival, [Julian] Fałat’s The Hunter’s Courtship and
others; many came back in an extremely damaged
state.” Cited in: Archive of the National Museum in
Kraków, Office of [Feliks] Kopera, Letter to the
personnel
department
at
the
Kraków
City
Administration dated 25 March 1946. “I do not know
whether the list of war criminals includes Lora
Wächter, wife of the Kraków governor, who resided at
the Potocki Palace known as ‘Pod Baranami.’ She
caused us great harm by taking away to decorate the
Wächter residence works including masterpieces by
Julian Fałat, as well as a very precious painting by
Breughel, The Fight Between Lent and Carnival—of
which the latter and Fałat’s pictures were lost. I gave
her name to the local courts, which demanded
information from me about the looting of the Museum,
and not knowing if Frau Wächter’s name had been
entered on the list, I am hereby reporting her harmful
activity on behalf of the Museum.” Cited in: ibidem, Dz.
p. 407/46 Letter to the Polish Military Mission for
Research into German War Crimes at Bad Salzuflen,
dated December 9, 1946), trans. Antonia Llloyd-Jones.
“looks down so challengingly”: Wittlin, City of Lions, 11–12.
Someone suggested I might: Jan Kot, Chestnut Roulette
(Mazo, 2008), 85.
Illustration Credits
All photographic images are courtesy of the author unless
otherwise noted.
fm1.1 Raphael Lemkin Papers, Rare Books & Manuscript
Library, Columbia University in the City of New York;
Professor Sir Elihu Lauterpacht QC
9.1 Niklas Frank
18.1 Lyudmila Bybula
p2.1 Professor Sir Elihu Lauterpacht QC
26.1 Professor Sir Elihu Lauterpacht QC
29.1 Stepan Haiduchock Collection, Krypiakevych Family
Archive 32.1 Professor Sir Elihu Lauterpacht QC
35.1 Professor Sir Elihu Lauterpacht QC
40.1 Professor Sir Elihu Lauterpacht QC
51.1 Surrey Chapel (Norwich) 54.1 Shula Troman
p4.1 Hans Knopf/Collier’s magazine 58.1 Yaroslav Kryvoi
59.1 YIVO Institute for Jewish Research 63.1 Professor
Adam Redzik 72.1 American Jewish Historical Society,
New York, NY, and Boston, MA 76.1 Raphael Lemkin
Papers, Rare Books & Manuscript Library, Columbia
University in the City of New York p6.1 Niklas Frank
89.1 Niklas Frank
94.1 Niklas Frank
95.1 Niklas Frank
97.1 Niklas Frank
98.1 Niklas Frank
99.1 Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe (Polish State Archive)
100.1 Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe (Polish State
Archive) 102.1 Horst von Wächter 102.2 Horst von
Wächter 104.1 Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe (Polish
State Archive) p8.1 Patrick Lawrence QC
117.1 Professor Sir Elihu Lauterpacht QC
117.2 Getty Images
117.3 Getty Images
118.1 Niklas Frank
p9.1 Herta Peleg
131.1 Herta Peleg
132.1 Herta Peleg
p10.1 Patrick Lawrence QC
136.1 American Jewish Historical Society, New York, NY,
and Boston, MA 139.1 Professor Sir Elihu Lauterpacht
QC
145.1 Horst von Wächter 152.1 Niklas Frank
155.1 Patrick Lawrence QC
158.1 Ullstein Bild Archive
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